Sturgeon's Law

Progress

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:59:00 +0000

I'm working on a new poem draft that I hope will be done within the next couple of days. That poem will represent #48 in manuscript #2, meaning it meets the minimum length requirement for most full-length poetry book submissions. The manuscript won't be done by any means, and I won't send it out at least until fall, but this will be an important preliminary step. It's also the next-to-last poem I want to finish before my major spring submission, which I should have done before AWP. After that, I think I am going to need a break from poetry for at least a full month.

Anti- Feature #39

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:11:00 +0000

Anti-'s Feature #39 is a collaborative effort from John Cotter and Shafer Hall. This is the first collaborative feature we've had (though we've published collaboratives in our issues), so we're glad to break that barrier. We hope the next feature milestone will be translations. In the meantime, definitely read this!

Word Clouds

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:31:00 +0000

I did a couple word clouds of where my manuscript stands right now. Quite a diverse bunch of oddness, so that suits me. Most of the commonly repeated words (thirteen and something, for example), are based almost entirely on repetition in a single poem.

created at TagCrowd.com

Two Little Things

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:43:00 +0000

First of all, the good news I alluded to recently is that I'm one of the winners of the Poetry in Motion contest at Metro Arts in Transit of St. Louis, meaning my poem (the first one here, or you can scroll through the winner list too) will be put on a poster with lovely design (see last year's winners for examples) and will appear on Metro rail cars and buses all year. Hurray!

Also, I have a poem in the new issue of Pebble Lake Review. You can also hear me read the poem if that's your thing. The issue looks like a good one as usual, so you should go there. Thanks, Amanda!

I Like to Draft It Draft It

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:13:00 +0000

I stole this title from Mary Biddinger. Thanks, Mary! I notice that I'm using "again" at the end of poems a lot now. It's a new move/thing-I-have-to-watch-out-for.

Fogetry

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:21:00 +0000

Oh, I miss the good old days of poetry. Why, back then...

The public revered poets as deities and dusted them with gold every time they went out.
Riots broke out if tickets ran short to a poetry reading.
Poetry groupies were hot.
Collectors searched poets' garbage to find discarded drafts and auction them to the highest bidder at astronomical rates.
Literary magazines magically received poems, all gems, out of the ether, exactly as many as they had space to publish.
It's not just that history forgot them--there were no bad poets.
If you wanted to publish a book, you first had to score a perfect 100 on a test of literary devices, plus suffer from a potentially fatal illness, so anyone with a book was serious.
When someone published their friends, it was objectively right and done with honor.
No one ever learned to write in some workshop or program. A poet came out of the womb with a pen in his hand and iambic pentameter in his heart.
People were allowed to teach or to write poetry, but not both.
People were counted as readers or writers of poetry, but not both.
Poets were like either Simon or the Predicate: what they said, you did.
A secret cabal of poets controlled the world from a cave on Mount Olympus.
Poetry was an Olympic sport.
For a while, a single poem was the only manmade object visible from space.
Literary magazines could cure cancer.
You could read a poem without worrying that it had been written by one of those pesky women or minorities.

New Anti- Assistant Editor

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:14:00 +0000

Work has really picked up, so my posting here may be more infrequent for a while, especially since I'm working on a couple applications and want to get my poem submission sets for March ready to go. However, I'm happy to say Anti- has added a new Assistant Editor to the staff, one many of you already know: Suzanne Frischkorn. Welcome aboard, Suzanne!

Here's her bio if you don't know her:

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Girl on a Bridge (forthcoming 2010) and Lit Windowpane (2008), both from Main Street Rag Publishing. In addition, she is the author of five chapbooks, most recently American Flamingo (2008).

Anti- Featured Poet #38

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:14:00 +0000

Anti-'s Featured Poet #38 is Erika Meitner. One of her poems is "January Towns," but it fits this cold February well as well. Proceed to read it!

Tease

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:44:00 +0000

Got a nice bit of good news today. Will announce it when it's official. Tee hee!

Google Buzz - Who Didn't See This Coming?

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:20:00 +0000

Had anyone consulted me ahead of time on Google's decision to automatically opt millions of Gmail users into its Buzz service, which would in turn publicize said user e-mail contact lists to anyone else on the list, my first reactions would be (A) "Do you want to get sued?", and (B) "Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea?" And right on cue, here's the first batch of lawsuits. This is as colossal, hubristic a fuck-up as I've ever seen by a company, especially one as supposedly savvy as Google. I hope this hurts them, and badly. I hope no one ever goes to bed again with the idea that Google lives up to its "Don't Be Evil" slogan.

Cover Art for Anti-

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:13:00 +0000

Anti- is very interested in considering photography and visual art for its upcoming covers. Guidelines are here. If you are a visual artist/photographer or know any whose work you admire, please keep us in mind and spread the word!

Hype

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I tend to be very much anti-hype, but not so much anti-what's-being-hyped if it's good. TV is a good example: the level of microanalysis of The Sopranos annoyed me to no end while the show was on, but I quite enjoyed the show itself. Likewise The Wire, which I've started watching now and find very engaging (I'm only partway through the first season so far).

Movies are similar, though my movie tastes are so relentlessly entertainment/middlebrow oriented that the hype among my friends is likely to be for a movie I wouldn't care for anyway. In books, I still haven't read the Harry Potter series, and likely never will, because what bits I've seen make me think that the reality would never live up to the hype for me on that one.

One thing I like about poetry is that even when people try to hype up whatever they're trying to hype up (usually themselves, but maybe some flavor of the month), it can't really get that loud or sustained. And then I can take my time and go find out about the stuff I like at my own convenience.

Drafting It

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:48:00 +0000

I stole this title from Yusef Komunyakaa's "Somewhere Near Phu Bai." I'm about two more drafts and a bunch of polishing from having preliminary version 1 of manuscript 2. And also from having my spring submission package.

Poems I Like: A Better Approach?

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:54:00 +0000

It occurred to me that my zeal for categorization may have led to me glossing over why I actually like the poems I posted yesterday. Analyzing why you like poems risks taking the magic out, I suppose, but I also hate that kind of mystification of poetry. It's usually an excuse for laziness, much as my categorization was yesterday. Here's the beginning of some explanations, again filtered through my editing of Anti-:

"hymn to a thing that I knew and still know to some degree" by Joe Plicka

I like that this poem is a list poem, but the list has a great sense of buildup to it, followed by that fun turn of the last line. I like that it suggests a time and place without actually stating a setting, that it suggests story (or stories) without actually having a narrative, that it conveys action despite not having verbs, etc. I like how it tries to get at that feeling of experience you can't ever quite get at again, no matter how much detail you go into on a memory, again without stating anything explicitly. I like the reference to the "bubble gum boy" and his sticky, I like the light acknowledgement of the author's voice, particularly "yes I said trotting," and I like the progressively growing numbers of progressively odder things going into "an uncomfortable silence" and the last line.

"Flesh Eater" by Mira Martin-Parker

I like the blunt but not on-the-nose portrait we get of the character in this poem. I like how what is at first glance an unpromising opening line quickly turns in lines 2 and 3. I love stanza 4, with its parallel construction, odd adjectives, and subversion of the "___ of ____" construct with the amusing "butter knife full of contempt." The conclusion is strong, from the strategic profanity to the great parenthetical about the mayor's staff to the closing which is structured like a punchline but certainly doesn't seem a traditional punchline to me. Here's a guy I feel like I've known (or even could be in another 30 years) presented in a surprising new way.

"The Preacher Man Saves Lily's Soul (1914)" by Nicolette Bethel

The language, both the vernacular itself and the incantatory style, remind me of Philip Levine's "They Feed They Lion," which is just a fantastic poem, so this poem gets off on a good foot with me. I like the repetitions and different structures for "pour down Spirit pour down." I like the building of apocalyptic feeling for what is really a small-time revivalist fire-and-brimstone sort of operation, from the biblical section headings to the striking chant in section II. I like how it seems every word is torqued and cut as lean as can be. I like how it constructs these characters and this world.

Poems I Like & Don't Like: The Anti- Perspective

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:41:00 +0000

Elisa has been having interesting discussions on her blog about what poems she likes and dislikes, and what those poems do, and other such things. She also asked me to post about what I look for as an editor in a more specific way than the standard "Send us poems that move us" pap statements. So here goes my outlining of some poems I like and don't like, framed as Anti- editor.

One of the surest ways to get me with a poem is word/sonic play. I don't want those things at the expense of sense, per se, but I do think they can create sense, deployed properly. Here are some examples. (The examples I published are all by poets I knew nothing of prior to accepting their work--I make no such promise for the other "I like" examples.)

"Homage to Homage" by Kathleen Winter
"Bobwhite" by Travis Brown
"hymn to a thing that I knew and still know to some degree" by Joe Plicka

And some others:
"Six Apologies, Lord" by Olena Kalytiak Davis
"Cuckoo" by Larissa Szporluk
"Horoscope" by Sarah Murphy
"Language Mixology" by Adrian Matejka

Another poem type I'm fond of is the funny/creepy poem. Some I published (same caveat as above):
"Flesh Eater" by Mira Martin-Parker
"Unicorn as My Familiar" by Carol Guess

And some others:
"I'm Not Carlos" by Zachary Schomburg
"How to Discard the Life You've Now Ruined" by Lara Glenum
"First Date, and Still Very, Very Lonely" by Brenda Shaughnessy
"Dinna' Pig" by Matthea Harvey

I also like poems that engage in world-/mythos-building (maps, history, characters, idiom, whatever):
"The Preacher Man Saves Lily's Soul (1914)" by Nicolette Bethel
"The Vivian Sisters in the Realms of the Unreal" by C. E. Perry

Others:
"Creation Myth" by Mathias Svalina
"In a Country" by Larry Levis
"Border Triptych" by Eduardo C. Corral
"Lament for Gigolo" by Reb Livingston (and this series of Reb's, to bring us sort of full circle, would fit pretty well in either of the first two categories too)

There are many more types I could pinpoint, but those are a start, at least. I also haven't really looked at what I like or dislike at a micro level. Maybe next time I'll do that and/or post a few poems I don't like by "name" poets. This is a big project, and I don't think it's even possible for me to answer what kinds of poems I'm looking for as an editor without, uh, citing every poem I'd want to publish. But maybe this is a start.

Anti- Featured Poet #37

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:24:00 +0000

Just in time for Super Bowl Sunday, Anti-'s newest Featured Poet is Rob MacDonald. If you can figure out the secret code, the poems actually predict the Super Bowl winner!

Two draft and trunkless legs of stone

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:13:00 +0000

Yes, the title of this draft, as you may well be aware, comes from "Ozymandias," what I would answer asked my "favorite" poem. I'm not quite sure yet that it fits the subject matter, but no matter. That's what drafts are for.

Revisiting the Classics

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:19:00 +0000

I recently finished rereading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in at least a decade. I read it at least a dozen times between the ages of 10 and approximately 21, but I stopped reading it after that because I had so much other reading to catch up on and so much less time to do it. I was also a little worried that I'd find myself liking it less. However, I decided to go back to the series last month, and I plowed right through them again.

It's still highly enjoyable world-building, mythologizing stuff, and I was well prepared for the little foibles I didn't used to think about, like the fact that three-quarters of the time Tolkien writes an action scene, his viewpoint character gets knocked out early on so he can summarize it after the fact. I also found new things to enjoy, like Tolkien's immense attention to detail at the level of scene, particularly how a natural landscape is put together. Finally, he had some damn good figurative language I didn't even remember, such as near the end, after the main climax, when he writes of the celebrating masses "Their joy was like swords..."

It wasn't quite as great an experience because of that you-can't-go-home-again aspect of your childhood favorites, but it was still completely worthwhile. I've already started rereading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which I also probably read into the double digits, then stopped). In much less nostalgic news, I'm also tackling Gravity's Rainbow for the first time.

Ugh

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:38:00 +0000

I just found out I have to convert this blog from Blogger to WordPress by March because Blogger is discontinuing FTP support and wants to charge me to host my files on their servers. Uh, why would I do that exactly? Fortunately, I already have WordPress installed on my site, but I'm going to have to figure out a bunch of stuff I don't want to waste time on. Still, WordPress is way better than Blogger, and this will give me a chance to go through my archives and dump useless old content, which can only be a positive.

Fun weekend for Anti- submissions

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:17:00 +0000

Wow, this was some weekend for Anti-. I got to add a second name to the Anti- blacklist after a guy (the only three people I've ever told not to send work to me at either journal I've edited were guys, what a shock) was verbally abusive simply because I rejected him. And also, the first guy on the Anti- blacklist sent me another submission, then was verbally abusive when I pointed out that I had asked him not to send work again last year because he was verbally abusive when I asked him not to ignore our guidelines about how often to submit or lie about when he had last sent work, as if I don't have e-mail records. So now their messages go straight to the trash folder. Congratulations, guys!

In much happier news, I accepted several excellent poems that you will be seeing in upcoming features and issues. Here's a preview of some of the poets soon to have features:

Rob MacDonald
Erika Meitner
John Cotter & Shafer Hall
Marcus Wicker
Martha Silano
Clayton Michaels
Soham Patel
Stefi Weisburd

A Good News Bit

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:52:00 +0000

I'm happy to say Front Porch has picked up five(!) poems, which takes a big bite out of the current manuscript. It's some of the weirder, wackier stuff too, which is especially nice since that side had been lagging a little.

The Month of No Bad Eating

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:01:00 +0000

I posted on Facebook, but I can't remember if I posted on the blog, that January was to be a month of no restaurants, no junk food, no desserts, and no drinking alcohol. I bloated on all of the above during the holidays, and I badly needed a detox. So how has the month gone?

Restaurants Days: 0
Dessert Days: 2 (One was at my girlfriend's dad's birthday, and my girlfriend's mom likes that I'm a big fan of her food, so eating a piece of chocolate cake there wasn't a hard decision)
Junk Food Days: 0
Drinking Days: 2 (Game night with friends is more fun with a cocktail, sorry)

Without a doubt, I've felt better the last 2-3 weeks playing basketball. It could be partially a placebo effect, of course, but I have to call this month a success. Maybe I should implement a modified version of the plan, with a little wiggle room, going forward.

Poetry Fame

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Of people who will read this post, more will know my name than will have heard of John Ashbery.

If all the people of the United States (or, indeed, the world!) were surveyed as to whether they had heard of me or of John Ashbery, the difference between us would be statistically insignificant.

Therefore, I am as well known as John Ashbery.

QED.

Repeat as needed with Billy Collins, Kay Ryan, or whomever. Or make your own post and substitute yourself in for me. The applications are endless.

Poem Genesis

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:19:00 +0000

There seems to be a lot of fascination out there about how a poem goes from concept to completion, as it were. At readings, poets give explanatory intros, longer than the poems themselves, that include how and where and why they wrote each poem. Interviews often come back to these questions, more than just a craft primer, of what-were-you-thinking-when or where-do-you-get-your-ideas.

I certainly don't begrudge others their interest in those questions, though I only tend to find them interesting when the person doing the answering is especially funny and engaging. I think a lot of my disinterest is because I suspect my answer on the genesis of most of my poems would be similar:

"I had these two funny statements or ideas or facts--probably at least one of them was something not literally true that works in an interesting way when treated as if it is--and I realized there was a vague connection between those two things so they could be in the same poem. I wrote the connective tissue between the two things and figured out what they added up to. Then I rewrote the poem about 30 times, often losing what I had thought was the original point, as well as one or both of the initial lines. Then I had it rejected about 20 times."

It's not exactly compelling stuff, right? I mean, let's look at a couple poems from Torched Verse Ends that are online:

"Sturgeon's Law": My blog was already named when I wrote this poem, and I like the gist of Sturgeon's Law. I came across the facts in stanza 2 and used them to achieve the wrongheaded conclusion reached there at about the same time I realized the percent thing went with Sturgeon's Law. Then I found/made up a bunch of real and fake factoids, all misapplied. Stanza 1 came from a cartoon I wrote. My resume writing accounted for most of stanza 3. Snopes and my brain filled in the rest.

"Deathmatch Mode": I had a vivid dream wherein myself and three friends were repeatedly killed in various horror movie scenarios. It stayed with me after I woke up, but as I toyed with it, I realized the horror movie is really not my milieu at all. However, it took little effort to transfer the scenario over to video games, especially because I had been playing (I think) Unreal Tournament, which (at least the way I was playing it) is basically kill-kill-kill-die-respawn-kill-repeat-until-bored. I also realized the poem was turning into a loose proto-sonnet.

Are those explanations either interesting or useful? Do they enhance your appreciation of the poems in question, which should be the main point? I dunno...

Anti- Featured Poet #36

steveschroeder@gmail.com (Steven D. Schroeder) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:27:00 +0000

Your newest Anti- Featured Poet is Kathleen Winter.

"Penumbra’s a conundrum..."