I like this. What do you think?

Sorry the site was down earlier today. Too much bandwidth used this month.

Here's a poem draft. I stole the title from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.

I got mentioned! (But it's "Blackwater," not "Backwater"!) (To be fair, I think "Backwater" is pretty good there too!)

Some of these I've gone back and finished and even liked a lot. Some I doubt I ever will. This list does completely avoid movies I found to be without redeeming qualities, though.

1. Fight Club
2. Full Metal Jacket
3. Boogie Nights
4. Office Space
5. Apocalypse Now
6. The French Connection
7. Trainspotting
8. Swimming with Sharks
9. Syriana
10. The Aviator
11. Bringing Out the Dead
12. Sexy Beast
13. Be Kind Rewind

I mailed my ballot today.

Ugh, I cut the rest. I hate talking politics (at least in an earnest, straightforward tone).

An answer that could have been given by a poet:

"My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen. Indeed, it was never made more clear that it might not happen than in the great city of Chicago, where I found a small audience of people who really enjoyed the book, and were dedicated, and may I also point out very small. Not physically small—they were normal-sized humans. It seemed very possible the book would reach an extremely niche market composed of me, the people that I know, and the very few people in the world that I was able to convince to listen to me."

And why John Hodgman makes me laugh:

From "Our 51 United States" in The Areas of My Expertise:

Colorado
Nickname: The Dwarrowdelf
...
[The pioneers] chose the Rocky Mountains [for NORAD] because they were strong and largely Balrog-free....

There's a little Hodgman inspiration already in the humorous prose project I'm starting.

If anyone's interested in reviewing books of poetry (full-length or chapbook) for Anti-, please contact me. We some some review titles available already, and you can also pick one you already possess that you'd like to review if you prefer, provided it was published within the last year or so. Thanks!

I'd strongly recommend against using DHL for any of your package-shipping needs. I ordered a new laptop from Dell a few weeks ago, and they shipped it on October 8th. It was supposed to arrive within 3-5 business days. On business day 6, I e-mailed Dell, and they told me DHL had it and gave me an online tracking number. That same day, DHL tried to deliver but missed me. I checked the online tracker and saw that the package had arrived in DHL's distribution facility on October 10th but hadn't gone out for delivery until October 17th. (I assumed that meant it had been lost, but subsequent events suggest to me that maybe DHL just doesn't bother to send packages out until customers contact them to find out where the hell they are.) I called DHL's toll free number and entered my tracking info, and a recording told me they would try to deliver again on the next business day, which is today. I stayed home all day today, meaning I missed my workout, and I didn't even shower just to make sure I'd be constantly available to answer the door. DHL didn't show. I tried to check package tracking online. It was mysteriously no longer available and told me to contact customer service. I called their toll-free number again and got ahold of someone who entered my number, explained that they tried to deliver the package on Friday as if that meant anything now, then took my information and cheerfully told me that she'd tell them I'd be available to sign for the package tomorrow. She did NOT say they would deliver the package tomorrow. That means that so far I've waited a month from the purchase date and nearly two weeks from the shipping date to receive a laptop I paid over $1,000 for, and I'm going to miss my workout again tomorrow for a delivery that may or may not occur, unless by some miracle they show up during the morning. I am seriously unhappy.

Anti-'s Featured Poet #15 is Matt Schumacher. Go read his poems and ponder how appropriate they are at this particular juncture.

• Finish going over first layout of manuscript.
• Start putting together the "blurbs" I'm getting.
• Finish this year's MFA application statement of purpose.
  
• Finish Vanderbilt MFA application.
  
• Start process of applying to WashU and CSU.
• Decide if I want to apply anywhere else.
• Work on a poem draft that has a great start that needs to make an immediate 90-degree turn I haven't figured out yet. (Never mind: as I was writing this line, I figured out a preliminary way.)
  

Here's the little prose nothing I mentioned previously. It's actually part of something big that will develop gradually, but for right now I just wanted to be thinking and writing in a prose mode, and do something simple and fun.

The new issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review is out, and you can find a poem of mine in it. Other notable names include Al Maginnes, Deborah Bogen, Jared Carter, Michelle Bitting, J. P. Dancing Bear, and Nic Sebastian.

• Last night, I won money for the first time playing live poker at a casino. It was the second time I've ever played live poker at a casino. I honestly didn't play especially well, but it was an enjoyable time. The regular who sat next to me was very nice.
• I also watched pig races yesterday. Small pigs are cute.
  
• I believe I've mentioned that one of the best things about having the first manuscript accepted is that I feel like I can work on some prose now as a change of pace. The first little prose draft will appear sometime this week, I think. It's a slight little thing, but I'm having lots of fun with it.
• Current stage of manuscript preparation: proofreading the initial layout and getting blurbs. I have an amusing idea for the blurbs, though.
  
• Why did it take Hayden Carruth dying for me to learn about this exceptional poem?
  

Anti- is happy to announce nomination of the following poems for the Dzanc Books Best of the Web anthology:

"Red + Blue = Purple" by Boe Barnett
"Outside Howell" by Mary Biddinger
"Remains" by Dora Malech

Thank you to the poets for these excellent poems.

Last night I realized that I wasn't being at all consistent in my use of numerals versus spelled-out numbers, and changes I had made to two poems were exacerbating the issue. I finally found a viable solution that wasn't overly complex or arbitrary (all one-word numbers and large round numbers are spelled out, all exceptions to that are digits, percents are digits), but it took at least fifteen minutes of fussing over all the poems with numbers in order to figure it out. It's also complicated by the fact that ideal resume style uses all digits to save space and increase impact, but that looks ass-ugly in my poetry.

"Tatterdemalion" by Francine J. Harris (Boxcar Poetry Review)
"Puck" by Kayoko Wakamatsu (The Iowa Review)

The new Anti- featured poet is Nicolette Bethel. Many of you will also recognize the beautiful cover photography of Simmons Buntin. Thank you for your readership!

All this manuscript preparation hasn't kept me completely away from writing new poems. This is from Project 2. The title is stolen from Cap'n Flint (the parrot) in Treasure Island.

Last night, I went through the Torched Verse Ends manuscript finding every hyphen and determining whether it could be removed. I'm a bit OCD, in case you didn't know.

I was walking through Target the other day, and there in the display case were three Wiis. So I bought one.

I'm nearly finished proofreading/standardizing my manuscript (I tend to do this pretty well on the fly anyway, but it's good to have a second reader to point things out). Then I can send it and the cover photo, and wait to hear back on layout, etc. I'm still working a little on manuscript 2, and I'm thinking about prose project now too. Oh yeah, and MFA applications. Sigh...