I always have silly little projects (poetry and otherwise) to keep me occupied during short downtimes. My current Silly Little Poetry Project: putting together mini-chapbooks of my 13 favorite poems by a given poet. First up: Weldon Kees. An easy place to start because I like his work a lot, already know half the lineup without thinking about it (the Robinson poems, "For My Daughter," "The Beach"), and can figure out the rest easily because he didn't write a huge amount. I'll post the lineup once it's finished.

Shawn just recently sent me this picture of Shanna and me at the very beginning of our road trip from Colorado Springs to St. Louis in July.



I like this picture because I tend to photograph as long-limbed and gawky (which is not to say that's an untrue representation), so when I get a picture like that, where I don't (and also, incidentally, where I look a little thicker than usual), I like it. For similar reasons (not the looking-thicker aspect but the not-gawky part), I also like this one, from my cousin's wedding a couple years ago:

Received my contributor copy of The Bitter Oleander today. It looks very nice so far, but I haven't really gone through it yet. There's a large collection of translations from Spanish, so that's cool. Also received a rejection from Subtropics via e-mail last night at 1:30 AM, which is an odd time to be sending them out.

Hey Everyone:

Feedback wanted. I'm thinking about making chapbooks a regular part of the Anti- rotation, so I ought to ask a few questions:

Do you like reading chapbook-length collections online?
Do you like reading chapbook-length collections at all?
What format do you prefer for an e-chap? PDF? HTML? Something else?
When you're looking at ~20 poems, do you prefer a single author approach?
Would you be interested having an e-chapbook yourself?
What other questions should I be asking?

Thanks in advance,
Steve

Someone out there is kiting and/or bouncing checks that have my phone number on them. I keep getting calls from collections agencies and bad check programs for a Christine Baird or Christine Bourn or something. Fortunately, they're very understanding once they figure out I'm not her and have nothing to do with her.

I fluked into this draft in about half an hour on Sunday, much faster than my usual process. The title is stolen from Homer Simpson.

Today at Anti-, the new featured poet is actually a double feature of prose poems by Peter Jay Shippy and Anna Evans. These poems will be the feature for the next two weeks. Enjoy!

Way more irony and meta-writing than usual. I sense some honesty coming up...

Okay, Erin got to it quickly, so here it is:

Anecdote of the Maelstrom

by Wallace Maxes

I placed a maelstrom in the aorta,
And surly it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly pulsar
banish that hill.

The pulsar rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer loquacious.
The maelstrom was surly upon the ground
And tall and of a port in digitalis.

It engendered dominion every where.
The maelstrom was gossamer and bare.
It did not give of Chuck-will's-widow or bush,
Like nothing else in the aorta.

It's time again for poetry mad libs! The first person to supply the following words in the comments will get to fill out a classic poem from which I've removed certain key words. Here goes:

Noun:
First Name, Male:
Location:
Adjective:
Noun:
Transitive Verb:
Adjective:
Noun:
Transitive Verb, Past Tense:
Adjective:
Animal:

Have fun! (Previous player is ineligible.)

I didn't post about this when it happened because it was during all the craziness and catching up right after AWP, but I still wanted to mention it.

My mom's cat Gompers died last month. He was 18--he'd been alive nearly two-thirds of my life. He had gotten to the point where he was so arthritic he could barely climb stairs, much less jump onto and off of things, and he had congestive heart failure, and the week before my mom had him put to sleep he started having frequent little seizures. We'd known for quite a while that the time was close, but I was hoping the crotchety old man would make it until I got back to Colorado in late spring.

Gompers was a small Burmese cat with one of the most strident meows you'd ever hear. For a long time, his meow was my brother's cellphone ringtone, and it was forever startling us. Gompers got his name from me, who got it from Dave Barry when he was still funny, who got it from labor leader Samuel Gompers. He had a sister named Arabella, who died of cancer when she was about 11 or 12. He also had an adopted sister named Rain for the last year or so, though they were both too old to really get used to each other.

Only three people have ever been able to cradle Gompers upside-down in their arms and pet him: my dad, my brother, and me. I think I got to do that the most, but I wish I'd had one more time. Bye, Gompers.

Here's a picture of Gompers with my brother from several years ago:

"The Boys from Brewer Bottoms" by Jo McDougall (Natural Bridge)
"Pointing at Things at a Rest Stop" by Jon Woodward (absent)

Yeah, skip it if you don't care:

C-Geovany Soto
1B-Ryan Howard
2B-Robinson Cano
3B-David Wright
SS-Rafael Furcal
OF-Magglio Ordonez
OF-Hunter Pence
OF-Pat Burrell
OF/Util-Matt Kemp
Util-Jim Thome
Bench-Jeremy Hermida, Stephen Drew

SP-Brandon Webb, Justin Verlander, Chris Young, Rich Hill, Jered Weaver, Rich Harden
RP-Trevor Hoffman, Matt Capps, B. J. Ryan, Heath Bell

Analysis: I'm short on stolen bases as always, and despite the fact that most of my high draft picks went to batters, I can't get that enthused about my hitters after Wright and Howard. It's a pretty decent mix of prospects and veterans, though, with no question marks that can't be dealt with (except the possibility of Soto being a bust). The starting pitching is really strong considering I didn't blow that many high picks on it, and the relievers are fine for the bargain basement picks they are. Considering I did almost zero draft prep this year, I can't complain about the team.

Lieutenant Edmund Exley: Rollo Tomasi.
Captain Dudley Smith: Who is he?
Exley: You are. You're the guy who gets away with it. Jack knew it. So do I.
Smith: [cocks gun]

Tonight:

• Pay mid-month bills
• Laundry, including shirts on which I accidentally spilled a mixed drink last night
• Call my brother
  
• Prepare submission for New Orleans Review
• Try to work on my current poem

Tomorrow:

• Work 9-4
• Mail mid-month bills and submission for New Orleans Review
• Work out
  
• Read Irish poetry ~4-4:30 at the Royale with Belz et al.
• Go to the River Styx reading by Sally Van Doren and someone else at Duff's
• Prepare submission for Zone 3
• Try to work on my current poem

Gack.

I'm actually feeling not so sad now, but I was thinking about sad songs today, so here are 13 of my favorites.

1. "Hallelujah" by [take your pick from four or five]
2. "Let Me In" by REM
3. "Billy Austin" by Steve Earle (or its obvious precursor, "Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen)
4. "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty
5. "Lost Cause" by Beck
6. "Long Black Veil" by Johnny Cash
7. "Sorrow" by Bad Religion
8. "Stop Joking Around" by Hawksley Workman
9. "Innocent" by Our Lady Peace
10. "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas
11. "Bandit" by Neil Young
12. "Pancho and Lefty" by Emmylou Harris
13. "Strong Enough" by Sheryl Crow

And as a bonus, 13 songs I don't really think are supposed to be sad songs but that are sad for me for one reason or another:
1. "Death or Glory" by The Clash
2. "I Hate Myself & Want to Die" by Nirvana (minus the Beavis & ButtHead intro/outro)
3. "Everlong" by The Foo Fighters
4. "Electrolite" by REM
5. "Remember Me Well" by House of Freaks
6. "El Scorcho" by Weezer
7. "The Idiot Kings" by Soul Coughing
8. "40oz. to Freedom" by Sublime
9. "A Bottle of Buckie" by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
10. "One Great City!" by The Weakerthans
11. "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan
12. "Sloop John B" by The Beach Boys
13. "Polyester Bride" by Liz Phair

The issue of Pleiades with my review of Susan Tichy's Bone Pagoda arrived yesterday. It's apparently been out for a while, but it took extra time for me to get it because it relayed through Colorado Springs. I guess I forgot to give them my St. Louis address. Anyway, thanks to Kevin and Wayne for printing the review.

I'll also have a review of Caroline Noble Whitbeck's Our Classical Heritage: A Homing Device from Switchback Books coming out soon from the Rattle e-reviews site. Thanks to Tim for accepting it and to Brandi for sending the review copy.

Here are 13 of my favorite cover songs (no repeated artists, and I think no multiple versions of traditional songs):

1. "This Is a Rebel Song" (No Use for a Name covering Sinead O'Connor)
2. "Hallelujah" (Rufus Wainwright or John Cale covering Leonard Cohen)
3. "Bankrobber" (Hawksley Workman covering The Clash)
4. "Love Song" (311 covering The Cure)
5. "Hurt" (Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails)
6. "Stand By Me" (John Lennon covering Ben E. King)
7. "Stone Cold Crazy" (Metallica covering Queen)
8. "Snowblind" (System of a Down covering Black Sabbath)
9. "Suspicious Minds" (Dwight Yoakam covering Elvis Presley)
10. "How I Could Just Kill a Man" (Rage Against the Machine covering Cypress Hill)
11. "Fame" (God Lives Underwater covering David Bowie)
12. "Eight Miles High" (Husker Du covering The Byrds)
13. "Higher Ground" (Red Hot Chili Peppers covering Stevie Wonder)

Honorable mention: "Too Drunk to Fuck" (Scissorfight covering The Dead Kennedys)

Hi! We only need one more player to fill the fantasy baseball league. The draft is this Saturday. Won't you join?

You have been invited to join a Custom League in Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball.

In order to join the league, follow the link above or go to game front page, click the "Sign Up Now" or "Get Another Team" button and follow the links to "Join a Custom League". When prompted, enter the League ID# and password below.

League ID#: 84946
Password: poetrygeek

We will send you a confirmation with further details once you have completed the registration process.

--Fantasy Baseball Commissioner
http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1

This fortnight's featured poet at Anti- is Mary Biddinger. Enjoy her excellent poems on the main page for the next two weeks, and have a look at that archive as well.

It's been quite a while since I did one of these.

"The Unbosoming" by Olena Kalytiak Davis (Ploughshares)
"Midwest Still-Life" by Karyna McGlynn (TYPO)

While I'm here, I must mention that Andrew Zawacki was not only a good reader (who read from his very enjoyable long poem "Georgia") and an engaging conversationalist, he endeared himself to me by buying me beer and saying I looked like a bouncer (I'll leave out what led to that). If you've met me in person, you know I'm clearly too thin and glassesy to be a bouncer, but I like that he thought I approximated it. Simone and Kristy both read well too, and it was nice to see them again.

I'm off in just a bit to the Observable reading by Simone Muench, Kristy Odelius, and Andrew Zawacki. It'll be good to see Simone and Kristy again, and to see Kristy read for the first time.

I think every fan of The Far Side can name dozens of their favorites but can also come up with one single favorite. Here's mine:



What's yours?

A cursory glance outside reveals that it's snowed about 5-6 inches here since early this morning. The storm has already canceled my trip to the gym, and it's about to cancel my drive to WashU to see Michael Palmer give a craft lecture. I'd like to go, but not that much.

Instead, since I have a little extra time, I'm going to answer the interview questions from Very Like a Whale since I'm not participating this time around.

1. Describe your publishing trajectory. (Where did it start? Where is it now? How long have you been at it?)

It started with me sending out metrical poems I wrote as an undergraduate and off and on for a few years thereafter (I've been writing all my life, poetry since undergrad, serious published creative writing for about 5 years now). Some poems went to journals that were way out of my league (and sometimes not even interested in that sort of metrical poetry). Others went to small, metrical-interested journals that published me. Over the years, I've migrated away from the metrical/rhyming (though I still return) and from narrative/descriptive (though I still try to incorporate those as well), and the journals I send work to and get published in have changed accordingly. A few more prominent journals have even seen fit to publish me. Right now, my publishing trajectory is on "Try to get the first book published." Has been for about a year, will continue to be for ___.

2. What would you do differently if you had to start all over again?

Publishing-wise, I wouldn't send out to marginal places due to overdeveloped desire for publication, as I did in the early days. Some pretty mediocre poems got published that way, and some decent poems ended up in pretty mediocre company. I'm much better now about only sending to places where I really want to be. I know people who maintain superb acceptance rates by sending to every little, easily impressed place in creation, but it does nothing for me at this point.

3. Why did you start seeking publication? Why do you continue?

The groupies, mainly. And the fame, of course. But seriously, I want to entertain (or whatever word you want to substitute) people with my writing, and I want them to remember that I'm the one doing it. That answers both questions.

4. Does your relationship with your work change after it is published and if so, how? How does the concept of publication affect your writing in general?

Once it's published, I can stop worrying about it quite so much, which is nice. I still edit poems after publication, though. I think I've mentioned previously that at least half of my current manuscript is poems that have been changed post-publication. I have no answer for the second question--it doesn't concern me a whole lot. My standards are almost always going to be higher than median editorial standards for publication.

5. Talk about putting a chapbook together. How have you done it in the past, how would you do it differently now? Why are chapbooks a good thing or not a good thing?

My chapbooks are almost-miscellanies where I try to have all the same "type" of poem (not the same theme or the same form or something restrictive like that, just a general similarity of style/voice/whatever). For example, my chapbook forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press is mostly what I call my "weird" poems (not a pejorative term in any way). I don't tie them up more tightly than that because chapbooks in general don't do much for me, "theme" chapbooks even less. Chapbooks in general are a nice cheap way to get your poetry out there, and are a good idea for micropresses with shoestring budgets and poets who haven't established themselves with full length books yet, but after that they seem slight.

6. What’s your advice to someone putting together a full-length poetry manuscript for the first time? Share your thoughts on the importance (or not) of narrative arc in poetry manuscripts.

Any advice I have on full-length manuscripts should probably be ignored, given my lack of success thus far with my own. Narrative arc is utterly unnecessary in poetry manuscripts, though of course you can use it too if you see fit. I like manuscripts tied together loosely like the chapbooks I mention above, where I can dip in on any page and read a poem or two, and they're recognizably of a piece, but I don't have to read the whole collection, and I'm not guaranteed to get a poem on some narrowly focused topic like "Every poem is a playing card!" or "All these people have diseases named after them!"

7. Do you personally market your publications? If so, why and how, and do you enjoy it? If not, why not?

Yes, I get my name out there quite a bit. You're reading one of the ways right now. I also network with a lot of people. If you want people to read your work, you'd better fucking make sure they know they can. I don't love it, except the parts of blogging that involve making fun of things, and the parts of networking that involve hanging out and talking shop with poet friends, but I don't dislike it either. The other stuff mostly is neither wonderful nor appalling, though I've certainly seen other people doing things I consider appalling. (Like the guy at the AWP Book Fair who walked around repeatedly introducing himself thusly: "Hi, I'm ____, the ____ Editor for ____ Review.") (Or the people who send submissions to Anti- that don't feature things we ask for in our guidelines but that do feature a page of advertising copy and a link to their website and where you can buy their book.)

8. Complete the following sentences: Big-name poetry publishers are…..

...not something I have any experience with, but places that publish far too much based on lifetime achievement and name recognition versus current ability (or, even more annoying, based on whose pet you are and where you interned and where in New York City you live).

9. Small- and micro-presses are…

...a mixed bag. Do your research on them as carefully as you do on journals. Some of them are astonishing in the quality of books and support they provide. Some of them are unethical, shoddy, and/or downright embarrassing.

10. Describe the ideal relationship with a publisher and the relationship with a publisher from hell.

The good publisher works with you. The publisher from hell works around, over, and without you. Or accepts your work, then vanishes into the ether for 2+ years.

Here's the word cloud for my full length manuscript as it currently stands. Interesting that the body words figure so heavily, especially since there are (by my count) only three poems of 60+ that are actually about the body or use the body as a whole extended metaphor. Nevertheless, I may have to watch out about using the body and body parts as a fallback. Or retitle the manuscript something having to do with the body if I go the other extreme.

Most random word on here? I'd have to go with "pants."
Word whose presence is most based on a single poem: "percent."

It's kind of fun just to read the words of this in order...

It's been a long time since I did bullet points updates, so I think I can do one now, especially since it's my second post of the day.

• DUH! Edited to add one of the big pieces of news I wanted to be sure to mention: a chapbook manuscript of mine called 90 Percent of Everything will be forthcoming as an e-chap from Scantily Clad Press.
  
• Today it was about 75 degrees. In the evening, S&S had a fire out back, and we even toasted s'mores. Really a nice evening.
• Basketball was also pretty good today (except I have a rotator cuff injury that I keep aggravating). I made several plays that were good and none that were bloody awful (including no airballs, yay).
• I started playing poker online again a little bit yesterday. I'm up a couple bucks thanks to a nut flush draw hitting on the turn. Should be up more, but I have a really hard time checking the river to let the other player bluff at the pot.
  
• This week at work is going to be really brutal. Extremely heavy order load, I'm training two brand new writers at the same time, other team members are in flux, etc.
• One of the things I'm most insecure about is when I do some little stupid thing in regard to a friend, and then try to apologize, but I don't really know if or how much I've bothered/offended them. I think I worry a little disproportionately in those situations. Also, you'd think I'd have learned not to drunk e-mail (or at least do it a little better).
• Here are some poet names I either don't know how to pronounce or have learned within the last year that I've been mispronouncing for some time: Kalytiak, Laux, Nance, Poch, Nurkse, Rzicznek, Chiasson, Bredle, Kasischke, Medbh, Berssenbrugge. I'll let you guess which is which. And I'm sure there are more. This is a poetry-wide problem, I think.
  

Man, never let me forget that the people at the National Serials Data Program are incompetent. When I wanted an ISSN for The Eleventh Muse, it took me two applications and nearly a year to get one. And I applied for one for Anti-, only to get it rejected yesterday because the application "must be accompanied by a sample issue of the serial or a photocopy of its cover, title page and masthead." In the same envelope are my application and a guidelines sheet, both of which explain that for online serials, "a URL is required if the site is freely accessible," and printouts are required only if the journal does not yet exist or is not freely accessibly via URL. So, uh, great job following your own guidelines, idiots.

Today it's Copper Nickel Issue 7 (one of the 2007 issues). All the poems I list are poems I liked. Bold indicates a poem I definitely would have wanted to publish, italics someone with whom I have a preexisting connection so you know some of my biases.

"I Try to Kill Her, But," Roxanne Banks
from Utter, Gina Franco (this is the first time I've actually published part of the same sequence myself...)
from The Year of the Rooster, Noah Eli Gordon
"Free Electricity," Matthea Harvey
"Bendita Illusión," Jeff Newberry
"Dialogue with an Intruder," Nicholas Reading
"Creation Myth," Mathias Svalina
"Creation Myth," Mathias Svalina (yes, there were two)
"Posing the Donkey," Mathias Svalina
"Dead Letter Office," Allison Titus
"Ice Storm," Allison Titus
"Struggle to Surface in Ambient Wave," Fred Ulrich

12 of 22 I liked, a superb ratio of 54.5% (though that's skewed a little by the fact that there were several long poems/sequences that I counted as single poems). 4 of 22 I definitely would have wanted to publish, also an excellent rate of 18.2%. If you didn't already know Copper Nickel is a journal I like, now you do. Mathias was the clear star here, though several other writers did well for themselves.