Sturgeon's Law

POOL is definitely one of my top targets now.

"Colorado" by Jeffery Bahr (POOL)
"Tom Thomson in a Brand New Suit" by Troy Jollimore (MARGIE)

Now off to find a decent pool and darts place close by, I hope...

Dear Person Who Sold Me Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities Used on Amazon:

I don't mind that you or someone wrote in your copy and didn't bother to mention that fact in your listing. When I buy a used book, I'm aware there may be margin notes. I do mind, however, that at least one page has a chunk torn out of it large enough that words are missing. The fact that you had a book in this condition and saw fit to sell it as "Used--Very Good" does not speak highly of you. You are, however, still better than the seller of a copy of Sarah Lindsay's Primate Behavior where someone had crossed out words/lines and written new ones to "improve" the poems.

Sincerely,
A Ravenous Book-Buyer

When I was planning my move, I sent a lot of poetry submissions with SASEs addressed to my mom's house because I wasn't sure how long they would take, and I didn't want them getting here before I did or getting to my old apartment too late. So from time to time I call my mom or she calls me, and one of the items of business is running through a few SASEs. But my mom apparently thinks rejections are devastating for me rather than a vast majority occurrence. Today I got a voicemail from her that started with her saying "Steven, I have some bad news" in a sad voice that actually got me worried. Then she said "You got several rejections in the last few days" and went on to list them as if it was the end of the world. Moms, what can you do?

Yeah, if you don't like this stuff, skip on down.

My league had its draft yesterday, and here's my team, which I'm pretty happy with:

QB: Marc Bulger, Jay Cutler. Definitely a strength, with a proven top 5 talent and a good up-and-comer to back him up.
RB: Brian Westbrook, Maurice Jones-Drew, Ahman Green, Leon Washington. Some question marks at the top due to my draft position, but the plus is that this is a league that awards points for receptions, and all of the top three backs are good pass catchers.
WR: Roy Williams, Laveranues Coles, Joey Galloway, D. J. Hackett, Brandon Marshall. I wish I had a better #2 receiver, but otherwise this is solid. Hackett and Marshall are both sleepers/prospects.
TE: Jeremy Shockey, Randy McMichael. In my one real flub, I took two tight ends with the same bye week, but it'll be resolved easily enough.
K: Neil Rackers. I was extremely happy he was still available in the final round, 10th pick. He has top 5 potential for sure.
DEF: Minnesota. I think I was the next-to-last team to take a defense, and Minnesota is about what you'd expect with that, though they have plenty of potential.

This one may have to bide awhile. By the way, is Blogger typing incredibly slowly for anyone else? I can get a couple sentences ahead of the letters appearing onscreen. It may be the auto spellcheck.

I'm sure you know those fond memories you have of certain aspects of when you were younger, things you can never really recapture, even if you revisit the places and things that caused them. Here are 13 of mine.

1. GI Joe toys. I still buy a new one every now and again (mainly Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, for you aficionados), but mainly what I want to be able to do is make them fight or, occasionally, play football.

2. Touch football. I was probably better at baseball, but football has stayed my favorite sport, and I really miss going out and playing with four or five other people. I've mentioned this on here before. Note that I don't miss tackle football, which one year resulted in me having bruises the length of both arms.

3. Computer game all-nighters. So many games: Civilization, Warlords, Jagged Alliance, etc. Games with multiplayer hotseat were the best. Funny that one would get in more trouble for this as an adult than as a kid.

4. Roleplaying games. Man I was a dork, in case I haven't communicated that to you already. AD&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, etc. We were rarely sophisticated about it, but it was potentially great fun and another thing great for all-nighters.

5. Fantasy stories, good and mediocre. The Lord of the Rings is still surely one of the three or so most important formative books for me, but there were so many bad imitators I ate up: Robert Jordan, David Eddings, etc. And good books too: The Jungle Book, the Tripods trilogy (more children's SF), Madeleine L'Engle, Narnia, and more.

6. Dinosaurs. I was going to put pirates here, but then I realized that liking pirates is one of the few childlike things I still pull off pretty well (I have skull-and-crossbones t-shirts, a skull tattoo, a book on pirates, Treasure Island, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and numerous mentions of pirates in my poems, plus I was playing Sid Meier's Pirates last night), so instead I'll mention my dinosaur obsession. My favorite was Deinonychus--think Velociraptor but bigger.

7. Uncontrollable giggling fits. Okay, I still manage these once in a while, but they were a lot more common back then. Most of the other things on this list could cause them.

8. Quiz bowl. My quiz bowl days run into my college undergraduate as well as high school and junior high, so this is about as recent as it gets for this list. Now, I still know lots of trivia, but I'm not really proud of it, exactly. I am proud of it inexactly.

9. Drawing maps of made-up worlds. This is still pretty cool, but I hope if I did it now, the maps would be both more plausible and more creative. I think a poetry project in this vein would be interesting too.

10. Baseball statistics. Here's one that I'm actually still quite close to, but neither baseball cards nor baseball simulations hold quite the same magic. I still want to create the all-time teams for every franchise though.

11. Standardized tests. Yes, they're tedious and often pretty lame. Nonetheless, I rock the house at standardized tests. ACT, SAT, whatever those other ones were... Two years ago, the GRE turned out to be much the same way.

12. Inventing stupid games. There was one game we played where we wrote prizes on slips of paper and took turns drawing them randomly. Some of them were great prizes like cars, and some were terrible prizes like "used Kleenex." I don't know if the "game" really had rules per se.

13. Fishing. I wasn't even that good at it, but I did like it. I even got to fish in Alaska twice with my dad. Now I haven't been fishing in over a year, and when I am outdoors, I'd rather find other activities or even just admire the scenery.

I finally got off my ass and updated the Publication Database again. Feel free to use it in its incomplete state, or join, or e-mail me if you want me to add something--good way to prod me to action.

Well, the results from Best New Poets 2007 are in, and I'm happy to say that two poems from The Eleventh Muse 2007 made the cut: Kelly Madigan Erlandson's "Reliquary" and Margaret Ronda's "Walking Late." Congratulations to both poets, and I can't tell you how happy I am for that good fortune to befall my last issue.

While we're on the subject, I don't know what the situation is with The Eleventh Muse now. I was under the impression someone was taking over, and the website said it was open for submissions again, but I don't know at all. I told Poetry West all the stuff they needed to pick up in my absence. It's up to them now.

• Being able to make the crowd laugh several times at a reading is all I really want. It's also funny when you go to a reading, and your friends, who are not part of the poetry scene, bump into as many people they know there as you do.
  
• We have the drainage issues mostly resolved (or at least in a workable place) and the downstairs room mostly cleaned out, so now it's just drywalling and carpeting. I hope to be into my real room two weekends from now.
• By then, I should also have a new computer delivered. I went through Dell because I could still get a new computer with Windows XP on it, and I don't want the hassle of upgrading to Vista until it's a little more widespread, especially since I can't use the new Word for work.
• I neglected to mention on the blog a couple weeks ago that I'm now a first-time uncle. My niece's name is Maile (my-lee, a Hawaiian flowering vine). I don't know when I'll first get to meet her.
  
• Anyone who gets me to move to a different state ought to know that part of me will always be in Colorado.
• I changed the title of my manuscript thanks to whoever brought Anne's discussion of titles to my attention. It's now Torched Verse Ends.
  

Well, it was a fun time. I ended up reading eight poems, and it was one of the bigger crowds I've ever had for a poetry reading. Had a glass of Macallan afterward that was originally supposed to be a shot of bourbon, but the bartender, uh, wasn't paying attention. Thanks to Richard Newman and Amy Debrecht for the reading opportunity, to Duff's for hosting it, and to my friends for showing up...

Here's the tentative list for the poems I'll read tomorrow (with first lines). This may well change, as I tend to shuffle quite a bit, and there are several poems I'd like to add. I only have about 10 minutes to read, sadly.

"Bad Naturelover" ("Nature is a MILF,")
"All the Better to Eat You With" ("Out there a squirrel chitters in a cherry tree net,")
"Press" ("New desk attendant:"
"Without Glasses" ("The masses in the television merge.")
"Open Late" ("As you consider a three dollar burrito in the corner")
"Cushion" ("To win, my brother needed to bank and sink")
"Coal Seam Fire" ("The kobolds in the coal")
"Clockwork" ("In the 27 seconds")
"Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 3" (Prose poem, first sentence: "Answer all items either true or false."
"Sturgeon's Law" ("90% of everything is crap[.]")

More endstopped first lines than I would have guessed.

Man I'm glad I don't run the Best New Poets project. Some of those people in the blog comments seem to be horribly spiteful clueless newbies. Anyway...

"Each Day" by Aaron Anstett (Thieves Jargon)
"Reading an Ex Lover’s First Novel" by Ashley Capps (Post Road)

I admit my complete and obvious bias about Aaron's poem, but it's still damn good.

I have now been invited to participate in as many readings here as I would in any given year in Colorado Springs. Come see me on Monday, August 20th at 7:30 PM at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, St. Louis as part of the River Styx Hungry Young Poets series. I'll be reading with all the fine poets listed under August 20th but one, whom I'm subbing for. (I'm not sure which one.)

Also, if you haven't been here in a couple days, please go down one post and look at the AWP request. Can you help a poet out?

I've been a very slack blogger recently, for which I apologize. I haven't really gotten back into the rhythm of how I balance all my activities since the move, but I think I should soon.

Is there anyone going to AWP who is looking for a roommate or who is willing to have someone (me) pay to crash on their floor? Or do you know anyone who fits the above criteria? I'm a fairly unobtrusive roommate, and I definitely pay in a timely manner. Please let me know. I'd like to make it to New York.

I had lunch at the Schlafly Bottleworks today with some St. Louis poets. My poetry pal Chad Parmenter was kind enough to introduce me to Aaron Belz, Richard Newman, and Steven Schreiner. They all seem like good guys, it was a fun lunch, and I'm very much looking forward to getting involved in the poetry community here.

So I went to the local US Bank branch to open a checking account since my old bank doesn't have any branches in St. Louis. There, the personal banker told me I needed a state driver's license, proof of local address, and my social security card. No alternates, no exceptions. Now, I have "proof of address" in the form of bills that have been mailed to me here, but I didn't take those with me to the bank. And I don't have a Missouri driver's license yet at all. So I left the branch, drove home, and got on this compooter here, where within half an hour I'd successfully opened a US Bank account without, uh, any of those pesky things. Way to be consistent, US Bank!

Since I mentioned the reading I'd been asked to participate in, I might as well go ahead and let you know the specifics, which are also on the publications/information page. It's the Art Outside event, on Friday, September 7 from 5 PM to 7 PM at the Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest Ave. at Manchester, St. Louis. Come out and hear me, Erin Bertram, and I'm sure a host of other fine poets, probably including Aaron Belz, who's organizing the event. Ought to be a fun time indeed.

I found a liquor store in St. Louis that carries Pyramid Apricot. Now if I could just find one that carried Almendrado.

St. Louis liquor advantage versus Colorado Springs: real beer and liquor in the grocery stores versus crappy 3.2% beer.

Colorado Springs liquor advantage versus St. Louis: two mega-liquor-marts within 10 minutes of where I lived, both of which carried Almendrado and Pyramid and basically everything else I could ever want.

So last night I dreamed I got a phone call from Eleanor Wilner telling me she had picked my first book for publication. I asked her for what prize or press, and she mumbled the answer so I couldn't understand it. I nonetheless decided I knew which press she was talking about.

I don't know Eleanor Wilner at all, and my only distant connection to her is that one of my bestest friends was a student of hers. Interestingly, she's on the Board of Directors for the press I decided she was talking about. Amusingly, that press only publishes books of poetry by women, not something I was cognizant of in the dream. I don't even know why that particular press got in my head at all. Or Eleanor Wilner, for that matter.

I much preferred the one I had a while back where an acquaintance of mine was an intrepid reporter investigating some kind of wrongdoing in the mountain forest around my grandparents' cabin in Colorado, and I was basically just hanging out and helping. That was fun.

Still gotta work on the last stanza for sure. I think I mentioned on here previously that I only dream about one house I've lived in when I dream about a home.

The following things have happened in the past 24 hours or will happen in the next 24:

• Got an acceptance from DIAGRAM for a poem that sadly had already been accepted by Crab Creek Review. Sigh, back to trying hard to get into DIAGRAM.
• Was invited to be part of a reading event here in St. Louis in September, which is awfully good considering how short a time I've been here.
• Was suggested as the editor of an interesting new journal that may be starting up. I really have no idea what's going to happen with this yet, but if the situation continues to develop, I'll let you know.
• Will be doing my first local-color thing since arriving by going to this evening's Cardinals game. I will, however, be rooting against the Cardinals because the opposing pitcher is Jake Peavy, the anchor of my fantasy team's staff.
• Should be posting a poem draft tomorrow.
  

I'm going to go along with Deborah's initiative to memorize four poems in the month of September. I love reciting poetry and wish I had more by heart--right now, I have several that are close but I'm not confident in, and the only one I'm positive I know is "This Be the Verse." Sad, I know. I'm mentioning Deborah's idea here not only to give it a little more exposure but because for some reason my comments all disappear on her blog now. What's up with that?

Poetry is the aesthetic junction of sound and sense in language.

I have two poems posted today at Unpleasant Event Schedule. The poems usually stay up for a week or so, so please read them while you can, and read some from the archives too.

I celebrated this having-a-new-address thing by buying subscriptions, renewals, or back issues of Gulf Coast, AGNI, New American Writing, Black Warrior Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, American Letters & Commentary, Redivider, Caketrain, Rattle, CutBank, /nor, The Literary Review, 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, Pebble Lake Review, and Natural Bridge.

That, along with the ongoing subscriptions I could remember whose addresses I updated (the ones I've come up with so far are Poetry, New England Review, Verse, The Laurel Review, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, Many Mountains Moving, Backwards City Review, and Good Foot), ought to keep me flush with reading material for the upcoming year.

You should also realize that almost every single one of these journals is one that you can purchase online using Paypal or a credit card (complimentary/contributor subscriptions being the exceptions). Slow-to-adopt-new-technology journals, take note!

So basically I'm going to have the basement to myself. However, here's what my room looks like right now:





Which is what will happen when mold is discovered a week before you move in. The hope right now is that I'll be in that space within a couple weeks. Other than that, things are developing nicely. My stuff arrived and is in the house, I'm learning my way around the city (have been to a new gym and the grocery store by myself so far), and I've even done a little writing and sending work. Tomorrow is my first day back at the real job, and at this point I'm even sort of looking forward to it.