of crap out there on the Internet I've seen many conversations about literature, most of which consist of people saying stupid shit, then getting called on it by readers who leave comments, and finally the original poster posts a smartassy and pathetic reply attempting to talk shit back, but ultimately sounding like a blow job in the end.
I haven't purposefully gone looking for this stuff. Because I'm interested in contemporary writers, I'll Google their names, find what I can about them, read as much of their work as I can before I decide I really like them, and finally order a book or two. I happen to be doing this when I came across a blog called Poetry Snark. I'm not linking to it because it doesn't deserve readers. Albeit, the most recent post is from over a year ago, so it's not exactly active, the blog seems to exist for the sole purpose of making fun of poets and poetry, all from a very uninformed POV. For example, of Peter Cooley they said, "I have no idea what his poems are like, except for the ones in this anthology [whatever anthology that is], which seem to be about mummies and grizzly bears. Whatever." This jackass admits that she/he doesn't read contemporary literature and still has the gall to publicly post their bullshit.
I don't even know why I'm talking about this except to say, if all you're interested in about contemporary literature is making fun of it, then why are you wasting your (and everyone else's) time? I don't understand why anyone who has even an inkling of interest in literature would spend his time tearing it down, rather than supporting writers who work hard in an art that has a limited audience in the first place.
In another post, when a contemporary poet asked what was wrong with writing about the 14th century, this Poetry Snark jackjob said "It's boring." That's the same kind of uninformed, lack-of-effort, bullshit answer my English 101 students might provide. I say fuck these people.
And furthermore: I am big, and I will literally kick your ass. No bullshit.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sleep is for the weak
Insomnia makes me write mucho. I hate not sleeping. I drafted something today about cockroaches in Georgia. Georgians--I suppose all southerners--like to call these insects palmetto bugs. Bless her heart, but she's just a palmetto bug. In California, that means, damn, that bitch can eat!
An old buddy of mine used to say that sleep was for the weak. This guy's upper lip was larger on the left side because he'd been punched there so many times. If he had ever snorted something, it never ran out of his veins. He died his hair and liked to get in fights when someone called him faggot. Once I upturned a bottle before a cowboy layed into him, but it never went down. He was ready to shield his eyes. In other words: fuck that, I wish I could sleep.
Am reading Russell Edson's The Rooster's Wife, which is very Russell Edson. I love this man. I would love him more if he were a duck combing his hair. That is also very Russell Edson.
I just finished reading Faulkner's The Hamlet. Holy fuckChrist. That novel rocks. Faulkner always does. Now that I'm done with my PhD comps I run a finger down the bookcase and look for something I've yet to pick up, which unfortunately is a lot. It's mostly contemporary lit, since I had to read EVERYONE for those exams. The PhD exam in poetry at Georgia State (for creative writers) goes like this: start at Beowulf; end at what was published in Crazyhorse yesterday. You could be tested on any of that. Then there's poetic terminology and movements. Fiction, interestingly, I don't feel is as difficult. I suppose poetry's got a thousand years on the genre. The exam at State does not focus on contemporary fiction as much as the poetry exam potentially could focus on contemporary poetry. Yikes. That last sentence--the one before the fragment--yeah, that one's got insomnia.
An old buddy of mine used to say that sleep was for the weak. This guy's upper lip was larger on the left side because he'd been punched there so many times. If he had ever snorted something, it never ran out of his veins. He died his hair and liked to get in fights when someone called him faggot. Once I upturned a bottle before a cowboy layed into him, but it never went down. He was ready to shield his eyes. In other words: fuck that, I wish I could sleep.
Am reading Russell Edson's The Rooster's Wife, which is very Russell Edson. I love this man. I would love him more if he were a duck combing his hair. That is also very Russell Edson.
I just finished reading Faulkner's The Hamlet. Holy fuckChrist. That novel rocks. Faulkner always does. Now that I'm done with my PhD comps I run a finger down the bookcase and look for something I've yet to pick up, which unfortunately is a lot. It's mostly contemporary lit, since I had to read EVERYONE for those exams. The PhD exam in poetry at Georgia State (for creative writers) goes like this: start at Beowulf; end at what was published in Crazyhorse yesterday. You could be tested on any of that. Then there's poetic terminology and movements. Fiction, interestingly, I don't feel is as difficult. I suppose poetry's got a thousand years on the genre. The exam at State does not focus on contemporary fiction as much as the poetry exam potentially could focus on contemporary poetry. Yikes. That last sentence--the one before the fragment--yeah, that one's got insomnia.
Monday, September 22, 2008
One time, in workshop
Dockins had a poem with a line that read "the fish spit fishy expletives." Someone said, "I can't really imagine the fish spitting expletives. I mean, they're fish, and fish don't talk. And they're under water." Mike said, "Even in a poem?" Thank you, Literal Police, for nothing. We're still suffering from the bane of literary realism. Fuck you, William Dean Howells.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Why I Will Kill You With My Bow and Arrow
The nice folks at Storyscape had this to say:
"James Iredell’s mini-stories give the impression of a wide-angle lens snapping shots of the outdoors while human activity crowds the edges of the frame."
The other night Sarah laughed solidly for like two minutes after seeing this:
I just returned from California and Nevada. I had a last goodbye to my granny, which was good. I saw many old friends and my family. My family can get on my nerves, though. They feed off drama, and when there's no food, they create it.
Tonight is Poetry @ Tech's first reading of the season, with Kim Addonizio, Andrew Hudgins, and Mark Jarman. Addonizio visited UNR while I was in my MA program there, and we ended up partying all night. I wonder if she'll remember me. I saw her briefly at AWP in New York last year, and said hi. She looked at me with a twinkle of recognition, but I think she did not want to get into the "how is it that I know you?" conversation. She's pretty well-known these days, so I can't say I blame her. She probably thought I was some fucking stalker. It should be a good reading. Afterwards, Thomas Lux always has a party at his house.
I haven't brought up the passing of DFW. I don't think I want to touch on it much, since many others already have, and it's so sad that someone so talented had to go like that. Although I didn't know him personally, it feels like the writing world is so small that I very well could have. In fact, a new friend of mine was an undergraduate student of his, and we'd been talking about him as a professor only three or four days before he died. He would probably hate it if he knew someone spoke about him using cliches, but he burned so brightly, was so fucking brilliant, I imagine it was hard to deal with everyday life. I think of his story "Forever Overhead."
"James Iredell’s mini-stories give the impression of a wide-angle lens snapping shots of the outdoors while human activity crowds the edges of the frame."
The other night Sarah laughed solidly for like two minutes after seeing this:
I just returned from California and Nevada. I had a last goodbye to my granny, which was good. I saw many old friends and my family. My family can get on my nerves, though. They feed off drama, and when there's no food, they create it.
Tonight is Poetry @ Tech's first reading of the season, with Kim Addonizio, Andrew Hudgins, and Mark Jarman. Addonizio visited UNR while I was in my MA program there, and we ended up partying all night. I wonder if she'll remember me. I saw her briefly at AWP in New York last year, and said hi. She looked at me with a twinkle of recognition, but I think she did not want to get into the "how is it that I know you?" conversation. She's pretty well-known these days, so I can't say I blame her. She probably thought I was some fucking stalker. It should be a good reading. Afterwards, Thomas Lux always has a party at his house.
I haven't brought up the passing of DFW. I don't think I want to touch on it much, since many others already have, and it's so sad that someone so talented had to go like that. Although I didn't know him personally, it feels like the writing world is so small that I very well could have. In fact, a new friend of mine was an undergraduate student of his, and we'd been talking about him as a professor only three or four days before he died. He would probably hate it if he knew someone spoke about him using cliches, but he burned so brightly, was so fucking brilliant, I imagine it was hard to deal with everyday life. I think of his story "Forever Overhead."
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
On Publishing in Online vs. Print Journals
I know, this is an old debate, and I'll be surprised if I bring anything new to the discussion at all.
I have friends who publish most of their work in online literary mags. I have friends who not only do not consider online pubs as actual pubs, but do not even consider print pubs real if they do not show up in a nationally-distributed magazine.
I don't think you're doing your job as a writer if you publish exclusively online. Let's face it, there's a lot of half-assed writing in some online literary publications, work that, had it been submitted to say, Poetry, would have been rejected without the hardly-paid (or interning) undergraduate first reader giving it a glance. Sometimes online lit mags aren't refereed very well, and some questionable work slips onto the webpage. Other times, the journal is not really edited at all, and just about any blowjob with a keyboard can publish a sonnet.
I also don't think you're doing your job if you only publish in print journals. The web is, like the universe, infinite, and there are millions of readers. Online lit mags are great places to build an audience for your work--especially for emerging writers. Also, there's the merging of text that can occur online, such as audio recordings of the poet reading her or his work, or perhaps even a video of the poet at a reading. And--again, especially for emerging writers--it's not easy getting into the best available print journals. You really got to have some talent (perhaps at fellatio) to get into the above-mentioned Poetry. And frankly it seems (actually, I know this is true from experience with working for magazines, and from watching editors at magazines that will go unnamed) that if you're not Billy Collins or Denis Johnson, or the likes thereof, forget about it; you're not going to publish there.
But, then again, when I think of myself as a writer, and I think of other young or emerging writers who had trouble getting published, and who dealt daily with rejection, each story is always the same. 1) The writer loved writing, no matter how much people told them their writing sucked, or how many rejections came their way, and they kept doing it; 2) they kept sending their work out and sending their work out, constantly in the face of rejection (risking absurdity?), until they started to get published; and 3) they were, and still are, writing every day, trying to get better, reading contemporary work, picking up the journals and magazines to see if their work fits that aesthetic, etc. In short, the writers that I know who publish, do the work of being writers first before publication comes. And, they still deal with rejection, and still get the work out there.
With all mags, print and online, there's a hierarchy. As with all hierarchies, there's an established order at the top. So, often, when I read work in some of the "best," magazines, or those that have the longest-standing and highly-regarded reputations, I'm utterly bored with writing that does not surprise me. After a while it starts to feel like the same crap pumped out over and over again. Of course, this argument comes along with arguments against MFA and PhD. creative writing programs, saying that they all produce the "workshop" story or poem, and that's what gets read and published in these kick-ass mags. Maybe some of that's true. Ocassionally I do find a gem in, say, The New Yorker, but not usually. That magazine, at least, is pretty predictable. Some of the most interesting, exciting, and valid new work today seems to be published in online magazines, or in new or recently-established print publications. Places like elimae, Hotel St. George Press, Blackbird, and Failbetter , as far as online pubs go, are publishing writing that makes me want to tape down the hairs on my neck to keep them from standing up. Likewise, for print journals, just to give props to the magazine I helped found, and because I had a hand in its aesthetic, I know that New South is receptive to anything from anyone that kicks ass, or makes the editors look at the world and writing in a new way. So, it also seems that the place for the new and experimental is in the less-established publication, many of which happen to be electronic.
Either way, whether you're an established writer, or are working on it, I think you ought to be publishing everywhere and anywhere you can. So I would disagree with some people I know. I have a friend who, every time I get an acceptance he asks where, and when I tell him--almost every time!--he looks at me disdainfully and says "never heard of it." And I mean, I'm talking about publishing in places like The Literary Review, a fine, internationally-distributed print magazine that's published the likes of 22 winners of the Nobel Prize. Just because it's not The Atlantic Monthly, or some other obvious magazine that you can find prominently on the fucking shelf at fucking Borders, it doesn't count for this guy. I'd rather publish alongside Denise Duhammel in Limp Wrist, than next to some asshole with disdain in some slicked out tabloid-sized thing any day. Ah, who am I kidding? I'd take that too.
I have friends who publish most of their work in online literary mags. I have friends who not only do not consider online pubs as actual pubs, but do not even consider print pubs real if they do not show up in a nationally-distributed magazine.
I don't think you're doing your job as a writer if you publish exclusively online. Let's face it, there's a lot of half-assed writing in some online literary publications, work that, had it been submitted to say, Poetry, would have been rejected without the hardly-paid (or interning) undergraduate first reader giving it a glance. Sometimes online lit mags aren't refereed very well, and some questionable work slips onto the webpage. Other times, the journal is not really edited at all, and just about any blowjob with a keyboard can publish a sonnet.
I also don't think you're doing your job if you only publish in print journals. The web is, like the universe, infinite, and there are millions of readers. Online lit mags are great places to build an audience for your work--especially for emerging writers. Also, there's the merging of text that can occur online, such as audio recordings of the poet reading her or his work, or perhaps even a video of the poet at a reading. And--again, especially for emerging writers--it's not easy getting into the best available print journals. You really got to have some talent (perhaps at fellatio) to get into the above-mentioned Poetry. And frankly it seems (actually, I know this is true from experience with working for magazines, and from watching editors at magazines that will go unnamed) that if you're not Billy Collins or Denis Johnson, or the likes thereof, forget about it; you're not going to publish there.
But, then again, when I think of myself as a writer, and I think of other young or emerging writers who had trouble getting published, and who dealt daily with rejection, each story is always the same. 1) The writer loved writing, no matter how much people told them their writing sucked, or how many rejections came their way, and they kept doing it; 2) they kept sending their work out and sending their work out, constantly in the face of rejection (risking absurdity?), until they started to get published; and 3) they were, and still are, writing every day, trying to get better, reading contemporary work, picking up the journals and magazines to see if their work fits that aesthetic, etc. In short, the writers that I know who publish, do the work of being writers first before publication comes. And, they still deal with rejection, and still get the work out there.
With all mags, print and online, there's a hierarchy. As with all hierarchies, there's an established order at the top. So, often, when I read work in some of the "best," magazines, or those that have the longest-standing and highly-regarded reputations, I'm utterly bored with writing that does not surprise me. After a while it starts to feel like the same crap pumped out over and over again. Of course, this argument comes along with arguments against MFA and PhD. creative writing programs, saying that they all produce the "workshop" story or poem, and that's what gets read and published in these kick-ass mags. Maybe some of that's true. Ocassionally I do find a gem in, say, The New Yorker, but not usually. That magazine, at least, is pretty predictable. Some of the most interesting, exciting, and valid new work today seems to be published in online magazines, or in new or recently-established print publications. Places like elimae, Hotel St. George Press, Blackbird, and Failbetter , as far as online pubs go, are publishing writing that makes me want to tape down the hairs on my neck to keep them from standing up. Likewise, for print journals, just to give props to the magazine I helped found, and because I had a hand in its aesthetic, I know that New South is receptive to anything from anyone that kicks ass, or makes the editors look at the world and writing in a new way. So, it also seems that the place for the new and experimental is in the less-established publication, many of which happen to be electronic.
Either way, whether you're an established writer, or are working on it, I think you ought to be publishing everywhere and anywhere you can. So I would disagree with some people I know. I have a friend who, every time I get an acceptance he asks where, and when I tell him--almost every time!--he looks at me disdainfully and says "never heard of it." And I mean, I'm talking about publishing in places like The Literary Review, a fine, internationally-distributed print magazine that's published the likes of 22 winners of the Nobel Prize. Just because it's not The Atlantic Monthly, or some other obvious magazine that you can find prominently on the fucking shelf at fucking Borders, it doesn't count for this guy. I'd rather publish alongside Denise Duhammel in Limp Wrist, than next to some asshole with disdain in some slicked out tabloid-sized thing any day. Ah, who am I kidding? I'd take that too.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Baseball Writing
My contributor copies of Elysian Fields just arrived the other day and I've been scanning through it, reading poems, essays, stories, rosters. This mag is a lot of fun, if you're really into the National Pastime. Some folks aren't, and I understand their willingness to give up their identities as Americans. But for those people out there who still have blood in their veins, I think they'd like this quarterly devoted to the world's greatest sport.
Seriously, though, I wonder if anyone can write about baseball without it being sentimental. There's an essay in this issue that comes close, the closest that I've seen so far. It's by John Poff, a former Major Leaguer who now teaches what sounds like high school. The essay's titled "Amphetamine Story No. 2 (Notes at the Beginning of a Teaching Career)", and it involves a story told by Bob Uecker about big leaguers using amphetamines (what they called "red juice") to stay in the game. In fact, it's very subtly alluded to that the player who ends up using the amphetamines in the anecdote does so to take care of a hangover, thus cliches also abound in baseball writing. The fact that drugs are involved is the one thing that almost makes this essay not sentimental. Still, Poff couldn't avoid the sense of nostalgia for baseball in the 1970s that comes across in the writing. So can anyone write about baseball without having homemade bats shatter at the most inopportune moment, without drunken heroes that get it together and win the game, without mishapen trousers (and without using the word "trousers") and pre-1960-era baseball mitts? I'd like to read something about baseball that doesn't involve ghosts walking out of cornfields.
I'm not immune to sentimentality when it comes to baseball writing. The poem that's in the current issue reeks of it. It's an older poem (actually, an earlier version of it was the first poem I published in my college's undergraduate literary journal, back in 1996, or so), about some kid working at the ballpark, taking tickets from customers as they come in for the game:
The Ticket Boy
His long, slender-fingered,
Creamy-colored, no-haired hands,
Counted out tickets, collected money.
Calculating the lot.
I gazed across this warm blanket
Underneath thOther is sphere of darkeness.
"When do you get a break?" I asked.
He replied in semi-confusion,
"We should beat the Yanks tonight."
Yikes. What's up with the capitalization on every line? Who the fuck did I think I was? Why this catalogue of compounded adjectives? Jesus. I actually got this from an exercise in
The Practice of Poetry , edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell. The exercise is Richard Jackson's, called "Five Easy Pieces":
1. Remember someone you know well, and remember their hands, and describe them.
2. Describe what the person is doing with his/her hands.
3. Use a metaphor to describe some exotic place.
4. Mention what you would want to ask this person in the context of 2 and 3 above.
5. The person answers, suggesting he/she only understood part (or none) of what you might have asked.
I was writing about this guy who used to be my best buddy, Ike. Then, when we were seniors in high school, he started dating my sister, which worked for five years. Then, when he started cheating on my sister, I wanted to take his giant fucking head and shove it into the vice on my dad's workbench, and watch the veins grow and pop. But I got over it. Seriously.
Othan that, baseball IS the greatest sport ever. About that my sentimentality knows no bounds.
Seriously, though, I wonder if anyone can write about baseball without it being sentimental. There's an essay in this issue that comes close, the closest that I've seen so far. It's by John Poff, a former Major Leaguer who now teaches what sounds like high school. The essay's titled "Amphetamine Story No. 2 (Notes at the Beginning of a Teaching Career)", and it involves a story told by Bob Uecker about big leaguers using amphetamines (what they called "red juice") to stay in the game. In fact, it's very subtly alluded to that the player who ends up using the amphetamines in the anecdote does so to take care of a hangover, thus cliches also abound in baseball writing. The fact that drugs are involved is the one thing that almost makes this essay not sentimental. Still, Poff couldn't avoid the sense of nostalgia for baseball in the 1970s that comes across in the writing. So can anyone write about baseball without having homemade bats shatter at the most inopportune moment, without drunken heroes that get it together and win the game, without mishapen trousers (and without using the word "trousers") and pre-1960-era baseball mitts? I'd like to read something about baseball that doesn't involve ghosts walking out of cornfields.
I'm not immune to sentimentality when it comes to baseball writing. The poem that's in the current issue reeks of it. It's an older poem (actually, an earlier version of it was the first poem I published in my college's undergraduate literary journal, back in 1996, or so), about some kid working at the ballpark, taking tickets from customers as they come in for the game:
The Ticket Boy
His long, slender-fingered,
Creamy-colored, no-haired hands,
Counted out tickets, collected money.
Calculating the lot.
I gazed across this warm blanket
Underneath thOther is sphere of darkeness.
"When do you get a break?" I asked.
He replied in semi-confusion,
"We should beat the Yanks tonight."
Yikes. What's up with the capitalization on every line? Who the fuck did I think I was? Why this catalogue of compounded adjectives? Jesus. I actually got this from an exercise in
The Practice of Poetry , edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell. The exercise is Richard Jackson's, called "Five Easy Pieces":1. Remember someone you know well, and remember their hands, and describe them.
2. Describe what the person is doing with his/her hands.
3. Use a metaphor to describe some exotic place.
4. Mention what you would want to ask this person in the context of 2 and 3 above.
5. The person answers, suggesting he/she only understood part (or none) of what you might have asked.
I was writing about this guy who used to be my best buddy, Ike. Then, when we were seniors in high school, he started dating my sister, which worked for five years. Then, when he started cheating on my sister, I wanted to take his giant fucking head and shove it into the vice on my dad's workbench, and watch the veins grow and pop. But I got over it. Seriously.
Othan that, baseball IS the greatest sport ever. About that my sentimentality knows no bounds.
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