Shark Week

This sucks. I've watched five minutes of this crap. Let's deduct the possibility of one's death-by-shark-attack from death-by-old age: negative five billion. Yet Shark Week wants to show you how terrifying it is to get attacked by a tiger shark. Okay: it sucks to get attacked by a tiger--or any--shark--but the liklihoood? You're more likely to get electrocuted when drying your laundry. The Discovery Channel is only one part of the intricate system of things that drive me crazy.

Michelle Bitting's Good Friday Kiss

After coming to a close with my editorial work for New South I was kind of worried, thinking that in my professional literary career I've never not edited something. But my buddy, and former Terminus Magazine colleague, Chad Prevost called me and asked what I knew about book production. So, I've just finished formatting C & R Press's first book of poems, Michelle Bitting's Good Friday Kiss.

Chad and Ryan G. Van Cleave started C & R Press and their annual DeNovo Prize. Last year's contest was judged by Thomas Lux. Thom had this to say about Michelle's book: "There is something about these poems that is so immediate, so unflinching, so focused and visceral in their understatement, that I was, on first reading, astonished. On second reading I was astonished and deeply moved. On third reading I was astonished, deeply moved, and filled with joy!"

So, I think Michelle and C & R are off to a good start. The book will look like this



You can order the book at www.crpress.org.

The Death of Wildness

In "Walking" Henry David Thoreau wrote "in wildness is the preservation of the world."

Yesterday Sarah and I decided to do some walking in a wild place. Since Sarah's been living in Macon, Georgia, clerking for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals since last August, we've been alternating weekends between Macon and Atlanta. Of course, north Georgia is filled with dramatic landscapes lined with trails so one can get out into the woods and fill his or her lungs. But in central Georgia there is a dearth of wild places. The irony here is that there ain't nothing in central Georgia.

Most of the land is sectioned up for agricultural use. There are a few parks and wildlife refuges scattered here and there, but nothing significant. I understand that this makes sense for a state that's 8th in population, and only a little less than half that state's population lives in the metro Atlanta area. So half the state's rural. But such a lack of wildness!

I'm not talking about state parks set aside next to lakes with boating ramps and a singlewide with air conditioning and a Coke vending machine; I mean nothing: more or less virgin ground gone wild (that choice of words could be a splash as nature-porn), and left for the campers, hikers, fisherpeople, and hunters to use. More land needs to be set aside as National forest and waterways.

Anyway, we went to High Falls State Park and hiked a short three miles along a more than less-than-strenuous trail. It was lovely, and we had a good time. But hardly could we get away from the sounds of combustion engines or hollering men. A bit of hope: the park houses the remains of a nineteenth- to early twentieth-century now-abandoned mill and powerhouse.



Wildness has been creeping in upon humanity's "improvements" since this place became a ghostown. Vines crept up the brick skeletons of the buildings. Scat scattered around the foundations. Wildness, of course, never dies. That should be a classic rock song--something by Mellencamp.

Andre Dubus III, Laura McCullough, and other sundry writing items

Wednesday night The Perambulators met up with Chris Bundy's former teacher, National Book Award Finalist, and all-around great guy Andre Dubus III. He came to Atlanta as part of his tour for his new novel, Garden of Last Days. Andre gave a short reading from the novel's first chapter, then talked generally about writing and the writing process, and fielded questions from the audience. Afterwards the line for a book signing nearly led out the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum's double doors. We hung around, waiting for Andre, before we would have some dinner and a few beers and talk writing, family, friends. What took so long was the fact that Andre actually talks to his audience. I've met many a high-profile author, including a few Nobel Laureates, who couldn't give their readers the time of night (notice my sad attempt to destroy cliche). But Andre talked with each person for almost five minutes, and hugged them before they left. So not every writer has the personality to do that, sure, but what a great guy.



My friend, Laura McCullough, just emailed me about her new blog, where I learned about her essay about Andre's fiction that will be coming out in The Potomac Review. Laura herself has a new book of poetry forthhcoming from XOXOX Press, What Men Want. Her first book of poems, The Dancing Bear, kicks butt. She signed it to me with the inscription "You big, dancing bear, you" without then-knowing my affinity for bears. But she has now been a fantastically helpful reader of "The Donner Party Picnic Area"--along with Mike Dockins, Man Martin, and Chris Bundy--and so her understanding of my bearness is complete. This woman is a dynamo, folks. I mean, she's writing so much she makes me feel like a bum. Really, she's inspiring. When we talk via email I always want to get to work.



Two-bit goon Mike Dockins (whose first book of poems, Slouching in the Path of a Comet, was published last year by Sage Hill Press) and I have a collaboration of sorts coming out soon in Limp Wrist Magazine. Mike's been working on his second book, "Letter to So and So From Wherever." Our poems are--take a guess--letters! This started when Mike wrote a poem that was a letter to me. I then wrote a poem that was a letter to Mike. Then I wrote a poem that was Mike responding to me wherein I played with his style, his voice. So Mike writes a poem called "Channeling Dockins, Iredell Responds . . ." In this poem, Mike has written it, in my voice, only I'm attempting to sound like him, and . . . You get the picture. To steal from my favorite television program, Spongebob Squarepants, this reminds me of wondering if the mail carrier delivers his own mail, or if another mail carrier delivers his mail, then who delivers that mailman's mail. Is there an endless line of mail people delivering other mail people's mail? Mike and I scrutinized each others' books for about a month, so I can't wait to see The Letters between some cardstock.

New South Volume 1, Issue 2

Yesterday Chris Bundy and I put our editorial hands to New South for the last time--or so we hope. We're ready for the issue to be out, and to be done dealing with it, but it's also kind of sad, because we won't be working on our journal any longer.

A year and a half ago, after Chris took over the editorial chieftainship of what was then the GSU Review, he decided that the lit mag was not functioning to its full potential. GSU Review had been in existence for thirty years, but had been primarily an "undergraduate" literary publication. That's fine, of course. I was the editor of the University of Nevada's Brushfire, an undergraduate literary journal with no distribution or circulation. It was a great introduction to publishing--a classroom, in fact, where I learned how to be an editor and to use desktop publishing programs. But while the Brushfire had a budget of $7,000, GSU Review had a lot more cash. Brushfire was an annual, and GSU Review came out three times per year. Only one of those three issues was designated as the "undergraduate" issue, and the others featured works from artists and writers all over the country, a few internationals, and a bunch of GSU creative writing grad students. Chris and I both agreed that GSU Review's working primarily as a vanity press for grad students, without any exposure for the magazine at AWP, with a limited circulation, and no distribution, was a shame. It was time for a magazine makeover.

I came on as production editor working with longtime GSU Review p. editor Marc Pietrzykowski, (who has a first book of poems out here) together we worked on the last issue of GSU Review. In the meantime, Chris, myself, fiction editor Jody Brooks, and our fellow Perambulator Man Martin, began tossing around potential names for our newly incarnated journal. I can't remember all the different names we considered (I remember one of them, half-seriously, was "Lo Siento"), but we settled on New South, named for the creative writing program's "The New South's Writing Workshop," as it's advertized in Poets and Writers and the AWP Writer's Chronicle. Our first issue featured stories by Kieth Lee Morris and poems by Jake Adam York. We procured a table at last year's AWP Conference in NYC, and the magazine kind of took off. There was a sudden surge of interest in our new publication. The New Pages review of the issue states

"Now New South, a dazzling literary magazine out of Georgia State University, has joined the ranks of Madonna, the U.S. Mint, and other such American institutions. Formerly GSU Review, New South’s inaugural issue features a snazzy red plane flanked by two smaller planes, jetting into a future that looks wide open."

The reviewer says that our reinvention is a success, and we agree. We're getting more submissions from higher-profile authors than GSU Review ever did. Our subscriber base has increased, and we've garnered exposure by showcasing the issue at AWP New York. We've put together our next (and for Chris, Jody, Jenny, and I, our last) issue, which features work by fantastic writers, including Kathy Fish, Laura McCullough, Camille T. Dungy, Bruce Covey, Michael P. Branch, and many others. The issue should be coming back from the printers shortly.

The new editorial team is up on the website's masthead and includes James Davis May as editor-in-chief, Peter Fontaine as prose editor, Austin Segrest as poetry editor, and Kara Eidsvik as production editor. They're going to do a great job, and continue to put New South on the literary map.

The founding editorial team (Chris Bundy as editor-in-chief, Jody Brooks as prose editor, Jenny Sadre-Orafai as poetry editor and Jamie Iredell as production editor) sign off.

What Happened to the History, Discovery, the etc. Channel? Why television that was meant to educate fails

I'm currently watching an episode of Monster Quest about rats, monster rats, of course. Although, according to the show, the largest captured and recorded rat weighed just over a pound, the show seems determined to entice viewers with the possibility of the existence of rats weighing in at 24 pounds and over two and a half feet long. The evidence for the existence of these alleged rats, so far: some crackhead living in the tunnels underneath New York City who's so spun he can hardly stand still long enough for the cameras to film him. Never mind the obvious question: what the heck does this have to do with history?

It seems the heavy hitters, rating-wise, for the History Channel include Ice Road Truckers (which set records), Axe Men, Mega-Disasters, and other non-history-related programs. So, it sucks, if you liked it when the History Channel was the "Hitler Channel". At least back then the channel had something remotely to do with actual history. The History Chanel is not immune to the plague of television catering to the least common denominator. Example: Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Here are the program titles for this year's small-screen ichthyological extravaganza: Shark Attack Survivors, Perfect Shark, Sharks: Are They Hunting Us?, Shark Rebellion, Dirty Jobs: Jobs That Bite Harder, Science of Shark Sex. Of these, only two do not touch on sharks attacking humans, and one of those is about sex (and even shark sex sells, apparently) These programs claim to help with shark conservation, meanwhile scaring the living daylights out of viewers. Gut reaction: it's shark huntin' time. All this despite the statistics: in 2007, for example, there were 71 shark attacks world-wide. One of those attacks was fatal . This happened on planet Earth, human population (as of 2005): 6,453,628,000. That makes the liklihood of death by shark attack pretty much nil. But viewers want programs that tickle their fears.

So they get rednecks chopping down trees and driving on ice, which is dangerous, and stupid. They get "history programs" about Bigfoot. They get "nature documentaries" about benign creatures who don't remotely pose a threat to humans, that focus primarily on the rare instances when people got where they shouldn't have been and a big fish took a bite. I say, stick with PBS, this cable's for the weak of gray matter.