I received a copy of the current issue of The Southeast Review containing my poem "You Throw the Ball, You Hit the Ball, You Catch the Ball," as well as work by blogger and New Zoo Poetry Review editor Angela Vogel, and former Colorado Springsian Jenn Habel. Angela's two poems in particular are excellent. I also really like the old-styley cover art.

My big list of things to do has been whittled considerably, so I'm happy. I finished the review, I'm almost done with the interview, my application packets are ready to send to the letter writers, I prepared a submission and have one more to prepare, and I'm two lines away from a viable poem draft. All in all, I'm content with the weekend, even though I've been cranky for portions of it.

Did I mention I threw a perfect game in Wii Bowling? That was a couple weeks ago. Now, back to some form of work...

My posts will be short to nonexistent for the rest of the week. I have to do the following writing-related things:

• Finish a review I should have finished a month ago
• Answer some interview follow up questions
• Put together my MFA application portfolio of poems and send it to my recommendation letter writers
• Revise my manuscript for the September push
  
• Work on a poem draft

I also have basketball tonight and a date tomorrow. And I'm taking care of S&S's dogs for a week starting on Friday. So there won't be much spare time.

I finally labored through this draft, thanks in part to the return of my good initial reader. The title is stolen from "The Speakers" by Weldon Kees.



This hasn't been the best of days. It looks like my best friend won't be freelancing for the resume company anymore.

I need to buy two lamps and a bunch of lightbulbs at Target. Off I go.

Everyone and their sibling has already linked to Stacey Lynn Brown's detailed account of the Cider Press debacle, but at least I get to feel like I broke the story to the po-blog world last Monday.

While I'm here, congratulations to Stacey's husband (and my basketball buddy) Adrian Matejka, whose book Mixology was selected by Kevin Young for the National Poetry Series. I've seen it, and it's really a great manuscript.

The new featured poet at Anti- is Jill Alexander Essbaum with two wicked, wonderful poems.

"I’m the thin ice on the lake that you walk on.
You walk on. I call you. There isn’t an answer."
--from "Ballad of the First Wife"

Go read!

Anti- is now seeking visual art for its covers. If you are a photographer/visual artist or know of one who would be interested, a few representative and available pieces can be sent to antipoetry(at)anti-poetry(dot)com. Thanks!

Since I haven't found a roommate for AWP yet, I went ahead and both registered for the conference and booked a room. If anyone wants to share a room at the Hilton (or knows someone who does), please let me know. I have a room with two beds, at least in theory.

The titles of the poems I read last night:

"Start Watering Me, Please"
"From the Margins"
"We Never Did Anything"
"Stories from the Warming Wars"
"Did I Say That or Just Think It?"
"I've Had a Perfectly Wonderful Evening"
"Can I Not Get a Run?"
"I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means"

Speaking of titles, the new record for longest poem title of mine goes to "Sweet Mother of Crap, What Did the Bookcase Ever Do to You?"--the new title for what was "Book Attacks."

To my knowledge, this is the first picture of me reading my poetry in public. There may be others floating around, but I don't recall having seen any. Now there are two on my Flickr page.



The reading went very well last night, I thought. I was happy with how I did, and only one of the other poets (a Plath wannabe complete with suicide, daddy issues, shock tactics, and even a reference to Ariel) was disappointing. Had a nice steak and cheese sandwich at Llywelyn's beforehand.

The Cider Press Review Poetry Prize hasn't successfully published a book by one of their prizewinners since the 2005 winner, they no longer have the rights to the books by their past two winners, and the existence of those last two winners has been scrubbed off the website entirely. If you've entered this contest in the past or were considering entering in the future, I'd suggest doing some careful research before you send them any more money.

If you're in St. Louis this coming Monday, August 18, I'll be reading in the River Styx Hungry Young Poets series, 7:30 PM at Duff's Restaurant, 392 N. Euclid. Come out and see me. It was a great crowd and fun event when I read last year, and the one I attended last month was solid as well.

"The Field" by Sandra Beasley (Pebble Lake Review)
"Phoenix" by Campbell McGrath (New American Writing)

I received my contributor copies of the Fall 2008 Beloit Poetry Journal yesterday. Looks amazing so far, though I haven't read in depth.

My writing has been in a bit of malaise recently because I have a friend who is my most reliable first reader for all my drafts, and she hasn't been around much recently. Without that spur, my poems tend to be much slower to develop. Anyone else have a highly valuable first reader of poem drafts?

If you visited Anti- like I asked, you've seen already, but here are the poems (published prior to June 30) that we've nominated for the Sundress Best of the Net Awards:

“You Can’t Pick Your Friend’s Nose” by Aaron Belz
“Atomosophobia” by Jessica Piazza
“Census of Seagulls” by Jayne Pupek
“Osage Rumination” by Anthony Robinson
“Midwestern Wedding: Dream no. 6″ by Kathleen Rooney
“Secession” by Jake Adam York

Please visit Anti- to see Featured Poet #10, Dora Malech. Three truly spectacular poems for your reading enjoyment!

I'm not really a writing prompt guy, but in honor of Mary's holiday, here are 13 for you, new and from the archives. I'm stealing the three I posted in her comments because I'm lazy.

1. Write a poem in a mode of speech used in certain situations or to certain people (e.g. baby talk, drunk talk, etc.)
2. Write a poem that functions as a map
3. Write a poem that covertly makes fun of poetry but isn't about that
4. Steal a favorite line by a friend and use it as a first line or title
5. Write a lying poem
6. Make an unsupportable assertion, then support it
7. Write a poem that tries to be ugly
8. Write a poem entirely in future tense
9. Write a poem that functions as a movie camera
10. Write a beautiful poem with a spiteful persona
11. Create a nonce form based on repetition of a key line
12. Write a poem that could be a comic strip
13. Pick your favorite number and obsessively return to it in more ways than one

Two days ago I woke up at about 5:45 AM with a sudden realization that I knew how to execute a big idea I had been playing around with. I had to write it all down before I went back to sleep, of course, so I filled two full pages of my bedside notebook with everything I was coming up with. In the two days since, it's become a multi-page file on my computer, and I'm still coming up with ideas for it. I haven't been this excited about my writing in a while.

The only problem? The idea is for a novel, and I still have 1.75 poetry manuscripts to deal with, a poem in progress, and a desire to produce some shorter prose first before I move into a novel. Gah.

That's right, it's time again for me to look through a journal back issue and pick the poems I liked. Today, it's CutBank Volumes 63 & 64, from 2005. As usual, people with whom I have a personal or publication connection will be in italics, and poems I would no-doubt have wanted to publish myself are in bold.

"Civil War," Carl Adamshick
"Natural Disaster," Britta Ameel
"[Woken with words, relevance placed bedside]," Adam Clay
"Hallway," Beckian Fritz Goldberg
"'It's the Ohio system of ending things'," Erika Howsare and Jen Tynes
"Slander," Quinn Latimer
"Mug Shot," Cate Marvin
"Mushrooms," Cate Marvin
"Drought in Havana, 1998," Orlando Richardo Menes
"Southern: Narrative," Jonathan Minton
"The Lung and Haircut," Zach Schomburg

That's 11 of 26 for a strong 42.3% rate of poems I liked. Only 2 of 26 that I'd definitely want to publish ("Mug Shot" is the second, even though the bold isn't showing up on my screen) is a little lower, but I think reflective of how I liked plenty here but wasn't blown away by a lot. Quinn Latimer's poem was definitely the standout.

I'm going back and pruning old blog entries, cutting the filler posts and other random crap from 3+ years ago. I don't think anyone is ever going back to see what day I was craving milkshakes in May 2005. The more substantial posts will stay.

It's interesting to see how much my poetic views have developed since then too. And let's not even talk about my ability to write poems. Yeesh!

Okay, do you simultaneous submitters know what I mean when I talk about "unfortunate good luck charms" in the journals I send work to? That is, it seems that all the poems I send to that journal get snapped up by other outlets while they're still out at the first journal? I don't mean places that take forever to respond, since of course everything will be gone when I hear back from them two years later.

RHINO was my unfortunate charm for a while. Two different times I withdrew at least three poems from a submission to them. I started feeling apologetic about it after a while, but they were very gracious. My new unfortunate seems to be H_NGM_N, where I've had to withdraw three and five from my last two submissions. It always ends up feeling like a connection just barely missed, which is too bad because those are both places I enjoy greatly.

Have you found any of those places for yourself? Where?