silent defiance

POETRY

2010-09-09T16:04:00.000+02:00

Jacob Saenz, friend and former co-editor of Columbia Poetry Review from my time in Chicago (oh, so far away now, ha) has his second appearance in POETRY magazine this month. Check the poem out here!

Not Poetry, football

2010-09-05T15:04:00.000+02:00

Tate and his ego?

Tate Forcier is a 19-year-old kid. KID. I would love to see him not pouting on Michigan's sideline as the team finishes off its domination of a well-coached UConn squad, but there is more than Forcier's "ego" at play. I am astonished at the many narrow-minded faithful of the Blue, in their salivating over Denard Robinson's speed and what has become the unexpected -- a victory. There was ABC's dour color-commentating by Matt Millen and Shaun McD@#$@#$, creating a story, the producers commanding the game cam to focus in on Forcier for a good thirty seconds at the end of the game. Alone on the bench, a towel wrapped around his ears, hiding, perhaps, tears, Forcier was called out as a distraction. If anyone has an ego, its the sports world. The fans, the "professionals" in the booth, the people producing the game feed, looking for a story, are the ego-maniacs. How mean are we that we pick on a 19-year-old kid for having his competitive heart ripped out of him, and he doesn't know how to handle himself? How mean are we that we blame the kid for sitting on a bench crying, not thinking about the camera (we DEMAND he be media savvy at nineteen?), probably only thinking about how far he has fallen.

Forcier was, and probably still is, obviously hurt. We must remind ourselves: He is a kid who doesn't know how to handle huge disappointment. He's been hammered by the local press, and national to some extent, for not having a great work ethic. None of us knows how much of that is true; I remember reading articles (and seeing ESPN pieces) about how how he traveled an hour back and forth to work with a QB coach in HS. This kid played with an injured throwing shoulder, and still shouldered Michigan's entire team last year. He probably feels a little betrayed by the coaches for not being more loyal to what he gave the team last year.

How quickly to go from folk hero with May the Forcier shirts printed (boy, blame him for his ego while you buy his t-shirt outside the stadium) to wingless anonymity.

As a college professor, I see these kinds of emotions from young adults (kids, still, really) all of the time. However, the pouting and disappointment usually comes from a lower grade on an essay than the student is used to getting. Or, they venture what ends up as a misreading of a text and are disappointed when no one has their back. So Forcier's sulking, going from freshman hero for the most storied college football team to third string (not even back-up), is more understandable. So I ask of the hardcore and the fairweather alike: be softer with your tongue, and keep your ego to yourself.

I hope Tate Forcier stays and works himself back into the fold, because I do not think D-Robinson is going to stay healthy or continue to be this GREAT all year. No matter the offense, the QB should not have 20-plus carries each game. That's a RB's job. As a fan of the program, a fan of the three QBs involved, as a fan of Rich Rodriguez, I have to say RR is playing around too much here. He is going to need Forcier at some point in the season, and he is going to to want the experience and moxie.

Reports and rumors are going to point to a Forcier transfer, but he should stay. Michigan fans, Forcier, the coaching staff -- everyone in the college football universe -- we should all remember how quickly situations change in life, and on the field.

East Coast, Here I come...

2010-07-28T15:55:00.000+02:00

So, in the works all summer has been a move from my beloved Chicago to the D.C. metro area. Really, we're moving to Annapolis, but with an awesome reason:

My wife got a full-time position and will no longer be an adjunct like me! I am looking forward to the move, as her new colleagues seem to be really nice people. I am looking forward to the ability to be pickier with what classes I take, where that is, and not feeling overwhelmed by teaching seven, yes seven, classes in one semester to try and make a living.

I will miss my students at both East-West and Columbia, a lot. I will miss many of my colleagues at Columbia, too, of course. I did not have colleagues at E-W, though I must thank Dr. Gorman for giving me the chance to teach so many awesome classes, including Latin American Fiction and Contemporary American Lit.

I'm looking forward to the fall, spending lots of time writing, breathing life to the characters that have been cryogenically frozen in my head, waiting for the technology of time to bring them to a conscious state. Okay, I'm starting to get whimsical with my sentences...time to go and pack up and clean more of our Chicago apartment.

Later: attempt number three at kayaking the Chicago River with my anniversary gift certificate.

peace,

_____

Miguel Syjuco & da Bears 2010

2010-06-21T19:35:00.002+02:00

The paradox: literature and sports. Not really, if you are a Hemingway-type kind of lit lover.

Anyhoot, I strongly recommend reading Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado immediately. Escpecially if you are a writer, there's much to chuckle about, even guffaw, including the inclusion of...blog entries with SPAM comments. Adroit. If the novel is eligible for more awards, it should. No fancy prose or mystical poetically-blech description like "muscular" or "precise as a scalpel." How about f-in' good. Why try to articulate better than the author has done. Blurb this: read Iustrado. Now.

Also, getting excited about the future, including da Bears under Martz. With Knox and Hester playing Holt and Bruce, and Cutler practicing mathematical line theory in his throws, Chicago is going to rock this year. I continue to believe that Urlacher is not old, not washed up, and that he will dominate. Health is always the key in football. In a violent sport, you can't predict the split second destructions. The football field is a land-mine for potential injury, more than other pro sports (even soccer, which is highly underrated in its violence). Man on man -- the violence factor of men in prime shape, bodies at maximum mass, makes for easy cracks in the human architecture.

Well, I have to finish up the Spring Quarter grading at E-W. Looking forward to . . . a few days of sleeping in and not stressing about lesson plans.

Looking even more forward to a second-anniversary celebration of Harry Connick Jr. with the wifey tomorrow at the Chicago Theater (which is stunning in architecture).

peace,
C.

Paul Hoover's "God's Promises"

2010-06-14T18:23:00.003+02:00

Taut was a hot potato getting played with circa 2004-6 in MFAland. How I cringed.

Anyways, here are two . . . nicely reserved lines resonate with strong commentary (I dare "critique") of the human spirit | :-) |

You await a handsome savior,

but the plain man draws near...

Squibble all you want about the power of poetry, and whether it can change lives, but a poem can be as effective as a gun. Neither is anything but a tool put in the hands of humanity. Such lines as the above are bullets of knowledge. Use them wisely, fellow teachers, fellow students.

Hunger Mountain & other tid bits

2010-06-12T17:00:00.000+02:00

Check out the newest issue of Hunger Mountain, especially the poems by Erika Sanchez (including "Orchid"). And, you can check out my own poem and interview on the poem, too. I haven't been this close to Mark Halliday since I sat next to his at the Columbia Poetry Review debut reading a few years back now, I think.

Summer is nearly hear. The solstice. The end of the Spring term. There's a rumor that I have had an attempted murderer as a colleague. Also, two of my students found a six-inch blade in our computer lab classroom a month ago.

Flying off to Annapolis next weekend, but celebrating two years of marriage prior to his.

My June Reading list:

Cesar Aira's Ghost
Miguel Syjuco's Illustrado
Bolano's Monsieur Pain
Bolano's Antwerp (Since I love his work, I have to re-read this short "novel" and try to figure out better what he's doing with the short dialogue that seems chaotically placed.)

I just finished teaching The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and am awaiting the students' literary analyses of the roles of silence and love.

I am hoping a few more books come in at Columbia that I requested come in, including Yoko Ogawa's Hotel Iris. If you have not read The Housekeeper and the Professor, I profess that you must, IMMEDIATELY. Her prose is like experiencing firsthand the cherry blossom's blossom, a one-day reading that will hold dear.

I like the new blogger choices, and the school years out, and I'm working on a new piece of fiction, and I see blogger differently. This all means I might return to my Internet audience of (n)one.

bests,

very honored

2010-05-01T18:37:00.001+02:00

Two months ago or so Stephen Burt mentioned my my poem in storySouth on his blog. I remain very honored by the compliment. I suggest checking out the the entire issue, now on-line. I like Amy Jirsa's "Old Heroes." Particularly the lines:

And when this body has deflated

and ribs like fingers cup what’s left

of its last breath, who mourns?

I am one who likes, for obvious reasons, quality exploration of death -- both linguistically and intellectually. There's an odd sensibility in being asked to appreciate images of death such as seagull skulls and fox roadkill as symbols of life.

You can also check out Hunger Mountain for a new issue on-line, I've been by tonight. I actually attempted an interview for the editors, so you can check out my bumbling oddness. And, I can't wait because I get to read new work from ??? Suh-weet.

peeves

2010-01-28T06:26:00.000+01:00

I hate the improper use of apostrophes in replacement of a letter. It friggin' kills me when they're eating the wrong way. I also hate when they're used in plural numbers.

I hate the lazy use of hyphens when en or em dashes are necessary. I blame keyboards, really, because most people don't know that typing two hyphens and various spacebar moves will change hyphens to dashes. WTF Microsoft Word, make it happen for me. IBM? Somebody?

I hate when I make grammatical mistakes that I am most likely aware of.

I hate when people say "further" when they're talking about going down a block.

I really hate when narrative poetry shows little appreciate of music in the individual line - or appears and hears as such.

I really love narrative poetry, though, so that's one of many reasons poems guilty of this bug me so much.

I really like that cliche...bugs me. What a great verbification of insects!

Congrats

2010-01-25T06:51:00.000+01:00

to mr. mcdowell, who won the orphic prize from APJ this year. not only is he a fantastic writer, he's a Bear's fan. that means we're both kind of masochistic in our choices!

ah, just finished watching John McClain kills all the bad guys part 4. funny side note: I had a student who shared the heroes name. yes, I did always want to shout yippee.... and I did!

blog, blah, blog, blog...!

great poem in Hunger Mountain

2010-01-13T16:57:00.000+01:00

Go here, to Hunger Mountain, for a great read...

more football & more useless information

2010-01-12T23:46:00.000+01:00

I would like the Bears to hire Jim Harbaugh for the 2011 season if Lovie and company don't get it done again this next year. I'd also like the Cubs to find a better, younger CF than Marlon Byrd.

Back to work today, and my TR schedule is a stretch for the Winter quarter.

I am sleepy, but I have to teach tonight from 8-10pm. British Literature -- reading Heaney's Beowulf and Chaucer and More and ending the term at the end of March with some J.Swift, y'all.

Gearing up to send out a restructured manuscript to some places; a bit nervous since the last form of "the thing" made some shortlists from the summer.

I read Saramago's Blindness and Bolano's The Skating Rink this "break." Both=fantastic.

I am super-excited that I will be going on an Alaskan cruise this August -- I am truly looking forward to this. Yes, I hate Chicago winters, but I love nature, and I am hoping for some really great moments once we hit ports. Plus, we got a telephoto lens for our SLR camera, so I should be able to shoot some really great panoramas and action shots.

Oh, and we are going to get a brother puppy for Izzie. A tiny family member! I can't wait to find the perfect addition to my odd little family. I was nervous for Izzie (because I can't really love an animal more than I love her), but I think she will end up loving having another dog to constantly play with. She always loves going back to Defiance to hang with Lynn's parents' dog Sunny.

da poetry world

2009-12-21T15:27:00.000+01:00

So I didn't buy many books of poetry (we're poor), but of those I bought, here is my top 3:

1. Eleanor Lerman's Our Post-Soviet Union Unfolds (five stars)

2. The revived and reissued Thomas James' Letters to a Stranger (five stars, too!)

3. Sian Hughes' (Irish accent mark of the Irish i) The Missing

Favorite Book of the Year: Roberto Bolano's 2666 (here's hoping to Christmas Bolano babies under the tree!)

Happy Holidays,

da Bears

2009-12-20T22:00:00.001+01:00

Mistakes in team management over the last two years:

1. Anything on the 0-line.

2. Keeping veterans over younger players that outplayed verterans in the preseason:

Brandon Rideau getting cut to keep Rashied Davis this year, and cut last year over Bradley.
Lousaka Polite tearing it up for the Dolphins for the last two years after we kept Jason Mckie -- who can't run (how many 4th and 1 full back draws did he fail to convert last year); and can't block (look at Forte's ypc this year).

3. Bad veteran FA signings:

Josh Bullocks was a horrible signing at safety. Really? Darren Sharper was available, and having a Pro Bowl year in New Orleans.
Orlando Pace -- even my wife is sad that Pace (a Buckeye) decided he wouldn't block for us this year but still take millions of dollars.
Pisa Tinosamoa -- did this guy play in more than one game at LB? He looked washed up when he did. Perhaps we should stop signing old Rams players that were cut for salary cap and age reasons?
That WR we signed. Wait, we didn't sign a receiver to help out the young players. Instead, we drafted a player in the third round who hasn't seen the field over the fifth round pick (Johnnie Knox has been a rare bright spot this year).

4. The absence of created competition:

Kevin Jones, being injury-prone (and proving it this year), should not have been the only veteran RB signed.
Safeties?
D-line? I mean, Tommie Harris is a big, big, big baby in two ways.
O-line: Pace and Shaffer and Olimaye have been nothing. Great job finding such master talent Mr. Angelo. This Frank guy really graded out well in film when he played with the Panthers. I am so glad he's shown us nothing but being a nice role filler.

5. Relying on Cutler's arm and young receiving corp:

this might be more on Ron Turner and staff. But, Cutler laughed and denied he'd throw for 4,000 yards as a Bear, but he has 3,000 plus with three games left. If we had a better offensive line we could run the ball more, and we wouldn't need that much yardage in the air. Cutler's made a lot of mistakes this year, but the staff has done little to limit those mistakes. We needed a veteran to help out. We didn't get that.

So, this year has sucked, and though the young players gained some on-the-field-experience this year -- this year -- was one of the biggest disappointments in life as a Bears fan. We had real expectations this year, and we let Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers take the division. And we continue to allow every team's best runner to have their superlative runs against us. I am so tired of hearing the broadcast booth say, "And that's the longest run (pass) of the season for ______."

Please, fire Jerry Angelo and Lovie Smith and bring in Mike Shanahan or Bill Cowher. Please. Pretty please.

Awake from a dream

2009-12-15T02:51:00.000+01:00

I had a very distant, quiet dream that Sarabande was going to take my manuscript, but no. After asking to see the entire manuscript there were others that were more enticing. Ah, on the eleventh day before Christmas my true love gave to me, condolences as the wait goes on.

Happy to metaphorically see that I am closer. What frustrates me most about personal rejections are that you never know how close you actually were. How many notes did I crack that blew the audition.

I also got a personal rejection again from Copper Nickel. Aye, the sly beast eludes me once more with a coy response.

And the gym was full tonight.

Izzie got sick and puked on our couch, and we just did laundry yesterday!

I feel down writing all of this more so because my face is frozen. But, dear wallpaper, I am glad that Christmas is near. That means the Bears are almost done sucking for the year, and that Michigan's recruiting class is near.

And I remember why I hate blogs now, because this is the news I have to bear? Here, here, to all those emerging writer's waiting to step from success' shadow and make success theirs!

bests,

Bum McBum

Cheaters, Football, and Writing

2009-12-14T05:30:00.000+01:00

Why do students cheat? Why!

I find it so disheartening in a writing class to have students who won't write their own stuff.

I am re-tooling a few poems in the manuscript before I sent it off to a few more places this winter, perhaps before the end of the year. I have been re-energized in confidence by placing in competitions. (If you think that's bragging, anyone, then I guess just mentioning one's near success is boastful.) I am particularly proud to have been recognized in the U. of Wisconsin Press' Poetry series, where my work held up against around 900 manuscripts. Hell yeah!

I mean, the Bears have been depressing. The Wolverines, equally so. And now the b-ball season is not going that well either. Da Bulls are sinking. The Wolverines aren't living up to expectations. It seems like this is a common theme for my sports teams.

So, in the NFL I am rooting for the following teams: NY Giants, San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals. Right now I am predicting a Chargers v. Cardinals Super Bowl.

Overnight Winter

2009-12-09T15:26:00.000+01:00

One day it's 50 degrees, two days later the high is cut in half.

The semester has been adventurous & I am really surprised that it is at the point where most of what I am doing is grading essays (both the late and on time) and setting up times for presentations in the final week (next week!).

I had unofficial swine flu, which killed my bones for about a week, refrigerated my skin like bottle of white wine (sweats and all), and basically stressed me out since my body was invalid but my brain wanted to work.

I went to my first ever games at Michigan Stadium, and though the Blue lost to both PSU and Ohio State, I really enjoyed the weeeeekends in Ann Arbor with our friends Anand and Amaris.

Lynn and I dealt with the passing of someone special to both of us the week of Thanksgiving. Her grandfather was so influential to her, and he was such an endearing figure that cared about people. He was a WWII vet and just a man to aspire to.

I am stoked to have poems coming out in New Madrid's winter issue and Sou'wester's spring issue. I am happy that the poems that were taken were recognized, especially one that has been around since graduate school.

Also, last weekend I had encouraging manuscript news. I've entered into a fair amount of contests and open submission periods, and I am looking forward to entering a few more. I was going to enter the Crazyhorse/Tupelo First Book competition, but am miffed that it is still called such, the guidelines now allowing second books to be considered. I don't mind the extra competition, but I find that to be a gaping misnomer. I hope writers read their guidelines carefully. I know some writers who only enter the first book contests, fearing their collections won't have as good a chance.

For me, a book is a book and whether it is one's first or not, what makes it any less stronger because it happens to be one's "first." My own "first" book has grown from a toddler to a strapping young book of adult age! At least, it perceives itself as such (it told me), and has gotten enough head nods that it feels confident (for the first time ever) in saying such.

I had a dream two nights ago that my book was published, and published by some dream-induced fictitious press that made an aqua/teal cover with some chauncy copy and pasted boxy image with the title sitting on the box all laissez-faire. In this dream I was running away from my own book as someone tried to run after me and make me aware that this was my book. They were reading poems from it though I couldn't hear. Ah! I was being chased by a literati Jason, and the only way to get away was to do a Nightmare on Elm Street...and wake up! Talk about your mixed metaphor.

Me Love You Long Time

2009-12-05T22:18:00.000+01:00

I've got premonitions of good things to come.

Sad that I missed deadlines for BOA, the Walt Whitman and New Issues First Book, and Crab Orchard's open book competition.

Not to Mississippi, Not to Tupelo (from "Mexico," by Jump, Little Children)

2009-09-23T15:53:00.001+02:00

I was wondering, did anyone else enter Tupelo Press' July Open Reading period this year? I got the rejection yesterday, and it reminded me of the controversy that went on a few years ago. I admire the way Levine writes his letters to sound like he personally cared for, and read, [each] manuscript. Why then are "new readers" mentioned in the encouragement to send to the Dorset Prize?

More so than calling out Levine for being a money-grabbing fool, I just don't know how much stock to put in to such vague and general praise. If one is told that there poems are often original and affecting...may one get some examples? To what extent did TP/JL think this. Which ones did he think sucked and ruined the thing?

I really want to know what isn't working for the reader? What things made them say no? Instead, the escape for not taking my manuscript becomes "Our budget is severely restricted by this economy, and we have to be very careful about how many commitments we make." As personal as that sounds, it's another way of saying "the collection is not a right fit." Either way, the e-mail was filled with awkward, obvious juxtapositions. And then, of course, the encouragement to send to their Dorset Prize, which because of the amount of prize money, I am guessing more manuscripts will be fighting than did in July!

This was the first time I submitted to TP, because their books are beautiful and I thought the price was reasonable, and as much as I'd like prize money, the main goal is to have my collections put out by reputable presses. And I find Tupelo has some gorgeous books.

I have entered smaller press competitions in the past (Nightboat Books and Tebot Bach's Patricia Bibby First Book Award), and was shocked to get the letter stating that I was a finalist in the Bibby. I know some friends who said, Who are they? What is that? (I want to say, someone who knows that my book is worth reading!) As far as Nightboat Books, all I can say is that they have some younger, known poets as Editors, and that the book they sent me was beautifully constructed.

So, I am 27-years-old, and I have a handful of similar-aged friends in the same dilemma. Our feelings on presses seem to be seasonal, with a winter of small presses and a spring of only the famous. Our moods less on elliptical paths, and more like electrons dancing randomly around the atom. I, for one, go all over the place, day to day, sometimes second to second, with where to send to. I think most writers are kidding if they say they are decisive in where they want to be. They are either kidding themselves or greatly suicidal. Or about to give up from their self-imposed limitations.

So right now I wonder if I will send to Tupelo Press again, or Four Way. I don't like the idea that somehow if there were to be different readers for the press, that somehow I might crack the egg. If, in an open reading, the reading is left to randomness.... I know young readers, and I feel more comfortable in knowing that a press has a set editorial board. Ideally, this would only help, as they know what their press wants most. Readers are just looking what excites them personally, I generalize! Again, even as I write this paragraph I waver. It may be, after all, the reading from one interchangeable part of the press -- that unpaid Grad Student who happens to align themselves with your kind of writing -- that pushes your work through the slush; tattered, warped pages in their satchel.

Kay Ryan

2009-09-04T06:42:00.000+02:00

She's a runner! And here I thought, when I started writing poems at 18, how this was not something that anyone who did anything athletic did. Hah.

How did I find out? Well, from my wife's current issue of Runner's World, in which a poet is featured for something other than being a poet (even if her poetry "fame" is what made her make the "I'm a runner" section).

Pretty cool. Go runners.

Top Reasons I Won't Subscribe To A Journal

2009-08-26T18:47:00.000+02:00

1. They take too long in making a decision on the work submitted. If a journal neither replies to, or takes eight months or more to send a form rejection, I will not spend the money to buy a copy at Borders or get an annual subscription through the journal. I'm sorry, but I don't subscribe (no pun intended) to business as usual excuses.

If your staff is small then there should be less bureaucracy in decision making. If your staff is small and you are overloaded with submissions, perhaps your staff should spend more time reading submissions? That sounds harsh, but to me it's just common sense. If you are in charge of a journal, you are in charge of a business. Therefore, you have consumers to satisfy. But, too many journals tend to take the "Whoa is me" approach. Poetry is always dying! Poor young apprentice writers are always slaving through slush piles . . . and for no pay!! Not even a Slushie from the local convenience store!!!

Sorry. But, I quite enjoyed being on the CPR staff in grad school, not getting paid did suck, so did not getting a stipend, but I enjoyed banging my head through 500 poems over a weekend trying to find the 30 or so to come back to. And when I was co-editor, that was more fun, though still no pay or stipend. To me, these excuses are . . . excuses. Poor, artist-standard excuses.

2. The opposite of that diatribe is: free subscriptions, or free access. I like getting a year's worth of a journal and not just the issue my poem(s) is (or, are) in. I also like that Poetry Magazine now puts everything on-line, so I don't have to spend time at Borders or waiting at the mailbox to read a journal in which . . . I'll stay positive. So, it's nice to read amazing poems on-line. I love, love, love DIAGRAM and Boxcar Poetry Review. (And even if my work wasn't lucky to be in them, I'd still love them.) There's free, delicious work in every issue. And, they have friendly staffs.

3. Which brings me to: rude, crude writing. Badly worded Submission Guidelines, Form Rejections that include solicitations for a contest or annual subscription, or just plain annoying and sloppy editing in which editors: ignore queries, but somehow end up being able to e-mail mass e-mails that ask for my support (and yours, and yours). Seriously, I've waited that eight months, sent a very polite query, and you have time to ask me to spend money I don't have on you, when you can't spend time doing your job?

Surly, whiney, bitchy, catty. Honest. I'm not in a bad mood, not having a bad day, week, or summer.

4. I just don't have the money or time. As someone carving out time for an abundance of writing projects -- fiction and poetry -- teaching at two colleges in the city, being married, having a needy but adorable job, and being a devoted sports enthusiast...I just don't have 36 bucks to spend on a mixed bag of writing when I can read the journals in other places, for free! I read probably five hours at day, minimum. Poetry, fiction, news, sports news, student work. My wife and I have four four-shelf bookcases. One of them has two shelves full of journals. There is also another two shelves worth of books that "I've been meaning to read." Will I ever get to Auggie March? Or, will the next hot thing at the library distract me? Oh, Jose Saramago, how you entice me!

5. It's like dating. No matter how much I like you, you're just not into me. So, hot lady, out of spite, I am NOT going to propose we go on a long vacation together just so that I am reminded, at the end of the week (year), that you've enjoyed yourself (with my 36 dollars) and I am left with the bill and no reward (continuous rejection, especially formulaic ones, duh).

In an ideal world, I would support your existence, your beauty, if that is indeed what I found in you. But, alas, the world is NOT ideal, and there is no Midwestern field where I can sow money seeds and grow money crops.

If I did not consider my work worth it, gave up writing, and was JUST a reader of literature, then yes, I would subscribe to more journals, buy more single issues at bookstores.

But I am a writer, and why, as a writer, should I be sending my toiled cash to a place that obviously is full of staff that for one of an infinite number of reasons never supports my writing career by acknowledging my work in its pages? I have nothing against the journal for wanting to stay alive and be appreciated, but I am not going to be its life support if, in return, I am still in need of my own career support. Besides, I am a writer, and we all know how masochistic our lives are anyways. I know this is how you ensnare us. I can't keep falling your your tricks, Cincinnati Kid.

publishers

2009-08-17T18:09:00.000+02:00

Top 5 Presses I would love to design and publish my first manuscript (and second...):

1. Graywolf Press: I own more of their books than any other, at least in individual poetry collections.

2. Yale, duh.

3. BOA

4. Four Way Books

5. Tupelo Press

must check out

2009-08-14T06:47:00.000+02:00

The newest issue of Boxcar Poetry Review, which has nine sweet reads. My favorite was "Appalachian Aubade." I also liked "Revision" a fair amount!

I am also happy to know that my poem "on barns" ("Sun Peels the Skin Off a Barn") has a sister poem "on barns." However, the sister is at Boston Review ("Road Rising Into Deep Grass"), while my own barn burner (I'm lame) remains only in my first manuscript (currently Drowning In Defiance). Of course, if only BR would have more than personally rejected this poem and the others. Perhaps Ms. Steele stole my spot? Oh well, I love her poem.

I've been on vacation (which is more like an intense amount of driving, per usual). Also, had a non-poetry, real life dream-come-true. As Lynn appropriately described by tour of the Michigan Wolverines football facilities: "It's like this is one of those Make A Wish fulfilled wishes...my husband isn't dying, is he!?!"

Thanks to Anand and his father for making my childhood, and my adulthood, worthwhile! No, seriously, getting to watch the Michigan defense run through part of their first Fall practice: amazing.

On poetry news: tinkering, re-naming (of course), and avoiding new drafts. I have been in the perennial summer void.

I've read a lot of novels. I've been jotting down ideas for 2 novels and one short story collection. I am reading the largest novel I've yet to real (2666) and I'm too tired from staying up too late doing nothing, though. I need to get out drafts. Any drafts. Skunky beer drafts, even.

peace out,

This little Bird (Julie Bird), stopped me at the fence..

2009-07-17T16:31:00.000+02:00

with this brilliant couplet:

This cloud of breath’s a borrowing and lending

which links everyone, including me and you.

from:

Article of Faith

Et tu, Brute.

Brutus, even you.

Don’t tell me it’s not true,

the college city urban myth

that every breath you or I or anybody takes

contains a single molecule of air

expired with Caesar’s dying words.

To me it is an article of faith

that my blood, yours and everyone’s

is salt with two thousand year old oxygen

and, it follows, grains of every sneeze

or yawn or opera that there’s ever been.

Steam from Stephenson’s ﬁrst Rocket ride,

songs that went to space and back,

each bark and war-cry, each World Cup whistle blast,

Spartacus shouting I’m Spartacus,

Kirk Douglas shouting I’m Spartacus—

particles of these are sherbet in our throats.

And this is where I make observance :

the front row seat in the stalls

for the opening speech of the ﬁnal act,

at the foot of the soap-box and the busker’s pitch

and in the market, where the man who sells fruit

is zesting the air with his citrus patter.

Here, my lungs are nets to catch

this glitterfall of exhalation

to keep with Caesar’s sigh and Cassius’s kiss.

This cloud of breath’s a borrowing and lending

which links everyone, including me and you.

Do you believe it too ?

Breathe, if you do.

may I recommend...

2009-07-15T17:03:00.000+02:00

Elizabeth & the Catapult. If you like jazz-influenced pop rock, or the sound of Pop Rocks fizzing in your mouth (remember this great candy?), then you might like the debut album, Taller Children. The title-track song "Taller Children" encompasses what I most find worthy in music (including poetry): wry lyrics, just enough attitude in Elizabeth Ziman's subtle straightforwardness and pitch, appropriate use of repetition that will eventually unravel about 2/3 the way through, and a guitar solo that reminds us once again how influential the Beatles are and will be. So this last one doesn't really enter into "poetry," but poets, Get over yourselves . . . pretty please.

"Race You" is an elementary-aged child's escape from the doldrums of school. Of course, this is the world the song implicitly presents, but any light-hearted fool who needs release will like the magic world Ziman offers as narrator...almost as if you and her on a first date:

I'm gonna race you, race you, race you,

race you back home.

The sun's goin' down now,

and I'm ready to go,

yeah I'm ready to go.

/.../

Cause it's a shot-put down the beaten path:

one step to the right, three to the left.

The moon so high. The wind so fast.

It makes us feel like Alices."

The frenetic pace of these lines add to a moment where logic is set aside for child's play, and as a listener I am perpetually pulled down into Wonderland. Charming.

My only caution is the song "Right Next to You," which risks being elevator jazz. Friction slowed down the music too much here in Track 8. Thankfully the foggy moment clears up in the preceding "Everybody Knows," in which the piano is stripped away just as we are made aware that there's too much jazz! Instead, we get an a cappella introduction interlaced with a background Stomp-like beat that'll make you snap your fingers (or, if you're sitting, pretend you're steppin' on the bass drum pedal of your imagination).

...and this, apparently, is me attempting to be a music reviewer! Eh, at least I wrote something. Now I must get back to menial Summer tasks.

CANNOT WAIT ANY LONGER TO SEE HARRY POTTER TONIGHTS (yes, TONIGHTS)!!!

I miss the green of Ireland...

2009-07-12T17:16:00.000+02:00

This is from our trip to Blarney Castle last June.

Tony Hoagland

2009-07-08T17:59:00.000+02:00

Since I first read What Narcissism Means To Me (and then Donkey Gospel), Tony Hoagland continues to make me smile with, no matter one's aesthetic loyalty, his ability to write quintessential poems of vivid, accurate, if simple images, while also commenting on America's consumptive nature.

Furthermore, having just had my 12-year-old niece stay a week with Lynn and I (it was great to have her spend time with us), the poem "Personal" found in Poetry this month is very a propos. Though they must grow up faster and bigger in Texas!

summertime

2009-07-07T21:18:00.000+02:00

has been exhausting. friends. family. friends. full-time job phone interview (pray/hope/wish for me!).

dealing with manny and working with a new name for it now. my dog is putting her cute but long snout all over the keyboard, making it difficult to type. such a small dog needing more and more attention as she gets older!

rejections from the atlantic and the southern review yesterday, before my phone conference interview happened this morning. we're excited about relocating if I move on to next round. been going to the gym to bulk up. have the endurance and the metaphorical guns!

working on the ICW Instructors Manual and also preparing for a face to face interview even if they don't want me to come out to their beautiful city. I am excited put together one of my favorite teaching lessons, just in case! I hope it's the case.

I'm so filled with hope. I am not the best on the phone, and I know I could answer my views on assessment more concisely and with clearly focused examples. grrrr. having a week to prepare made me kind of over prepare!

I'm still in a jittery mood and that's coming across here. I'n not italicizing and I'm hopscotching across my life in the last few months.

With writing: sending to bigger journals still with hopes of breaking into at least one of them! One awesome, awesome periodical that also includes global articles, etc. I look forward to the next decision, and hope they love this batch more than the last. I have work out at least six journals that have sent personal notes in the past.

The manny, with newfound confidence, is out at three places under the new title and order.

But, what I am most excited about is the opportunity to teach at this school, as it's in a wonderful city and the faculty members who interviewed me seem like my kind of people! I like what they said about themselves and about the program. Everything there would be a great fit, personally and professionally.

I talk only of poetry right now to distract my anxious mind!

bests,
C.

Brilliant poem in Boston Review

2009-06-15T18:40:00.000+02:00

Read on their website, and also read their articles...

updates for the ether-net

2009-04-15T04:27:00.000+02:00

taxes, done. had to pay in (for first time ever) to federal because I messed up my exemptions and too little was taken out. annoyed that can only deduct 2500 of loan interest paid (out of 6500!), considering we both have masters degree and the loans that came with those. was going to file separately because I would have owed but Lynn would have gotten money back...IF they didn't have the b.s. rule that married couples have to file jointly to get the loan interest deduction. How unfair is that law? If you're an individual you can deduct up to 2500. If you're married, you can deduct up to 2500. Umm, boo.

Indians are sucking it up so far; another slow start. The Cubs are doing well. And Chad and the Dodgers are doing nicely, too.

Poetry-writing is coming along. Had to write two today to make up for none yesterday. My second one was well-received by one of my tougher friends-poet-critic. Sweet. Nice when the most critical (in a good way, I assure you (me?)) enjoy a first draft. I often don't enjoy MY first drafts...

Fanny Howe won 100,000 dollars. Suh-weet. Ange Mlinko won an award...did it come with money? I bought her first book. Needless to say, it was not for me. I say, give her award to Frank Bidart! Okay, perhaps that isn't a logical connection. But....

Classes are exhaustive. I have to finish reading a Joyce Carol Oates story I'll be teaching in...12 hours. Also, teaching Tennessee Williams in another class. And also, resumes...oh, yeah, resumes (pretend you see accent marks).

Easter brought a little candy, and littler discount candy upon return to Chicago and a visit to Walgreens. sad.

Nothing says NBA like Marv Alberts rough-housing voice. I can just imagine him biting and spanking a lady dressed in leather (remember that!)...

When will I send my manuscript out next. When will it get some acknowledgment.

When will the next poems come out. When will the next be given homes. When will I learn to use question marks again.

the cliche NPM 30-day challenge...

2009-04-08T01:22:00.000+02:00

poof

anxiety

2009-03-28T18:44:00.000+01:00

I hate the cold weather. I want a full-time teaching position with health benefits. I could use a trip to the doctor, and the dentist.

LMAO

2009-03-20T14:24:00.000+01:00

Our president is a bit mean! But I still laughed, and feel more shame...

poetry

2009-03-20T04:18:00.000+01:00

Why I hate writers' blogs? Self-promotion, large or small, my own shame included. They strip the focus from writing, and that is most importantly where my seething lies (mostly in my own addiction to blogs, and why I've tried to ween myself away).

Why I love writers' blogs? To share wonderful poetry by amazing poets/people, to feel part of a world (both real and virtual) that's hard to be part of most times. For beautiful words.

2009-03-16T23:35:00.000+01:00

I got a very endearing personal rejection from a magazine editor. The kind that makes you happy and feel oh-so-close. An extreme high and a little low. And a motivation to actually write some new poems.

But tonight, I get to read Oedipus and prepare an introduction for how to read and criticize drama....

"brief thought"

2009-03-16T00:40:00.000+01:00

The thing that gets me about the issue of accessibility
in poetry is that those who often fight against "simple language"
that has meaning on the first read
are the ones who use artificial syntax to severity,
making language more unnatural than it already is.

Language itself, put in common syntax, is an art,
and it pains me to read those who twist it
into some coded vampire language
that reminds me of what an angsty teen would write.

David Lehman once said to me, a poem must have both
the poetic and the anti-poetic for it to succeed --
it must have the rose, and it must have shit.
A successful poem must have a sense of reality.

When I apply this to accessibility, I think of how
those poets who are often argued to be most accessible
(such as Billy Collins) are actually those whose work
actually has multiple layers to the poem.
This isn't to worship Collins (though I enjoy some
of his work),
but he has a sense of line that few too "poets" have.

But here is where I was getting: I often read
poems by poets' whose defense of their work
ask us to take to puzzle solving, devote
extra time, wrestle with the syntax, be a decoder
of verbs and nouns. Yes, true, all poems need
a bit of decoding, but if the decoding must be priority
one, and I can't find a way into a poem without
translating the language first into my own language,
then WTF? I am not playing a game of hangman
or going to Ovaltine to get a decoder to tell me to buy
more Ovaltine, buy more of my poems...
if you can't create images and form ideas in my head
on the first read, forget you. The problem is, for me,
is that such poems aren't inaccessible, they just lack
some efficiency, and focus on the wrong things. t
Those poems with tortured syntax
are the ones I am done with. I won't return
to a poem that for me to really comprehend
the work to do so outweighs the clarity of what the poem
is writing about. That, in itself, is a dead argument to me.
One poem to say, language is arbitrary,
one poem, to say, we have no time for each other.

Such poems lack cultural substance outside of proving
that 21st century people lack substance (or humanity).

Perhaps this is true, overall? But I don't believe this myth

of globalization. It's too reductive.

I return to more "accessible" poems
because I am surprised
by their simple complexity.
I wish I'd planned this post, for I'd have time to insert
more poetry examples.
For now, though, I briefly attach some names
to the argument, below.

Shakespeare, for instance, was a master
of having his audience understand
what he was writing, on multiple levels.
One could and can get some of a Shakespearean
sonnet without too much effort.
It takes some time to understand the complexity
of his accessibility, though, for the 21st century reader.
Were people any smarter then than now?
I doubt it. People loved his play
on words, the puns, the entendres,
they didn't get excited by his work because
he wrote in some elliptical manner.
Quite the opposite -- Shakespeare's
become more complex to the 21st century,
because language has evolved.

I can imagine, if there is to be a "Shakespeare of our day",
that it will be one of the more accessible poets
like C.K. Williams or Fady Joudah -- not that Joudah
has been around enough with only a first book so far.

I have two Joshua Clover books on my shelves,
but I cannot imagine Clover's work lasting fifty years
from now. That's subjective, I am fully aware,
but his work is hit or miss. It was exotic at first,
with Madonna anno domini, but his following efforts
leave me searching for the soul of the work.
The play gets old. The work becomes too consuming,
and for any writer to so continuously ask
an intelligent reader to "figure me out"
is a bit self-indulgent.
I read The Totality for Kids with anticipation
and was miffed by the lack of connection
to the landscape it is to represent.
What I got on first reads was tortured,
though sometimes playful, language.
But I found nothing that represented life
the way "The Nevada Glassworks" does.
I couldn't hold on to any poem in Kids,
and I wanted to...

The pleasure of sound and saying, moving one's lips
in exotic phrases. Yes, this is a good thing
with all poetry that is worth reading. But this is not
reserved for the less accessible. What I love most
of poems by Clover is the sound play.
The same goes for a poet like Matthea Harvey.

But the same also goes for more accessible poets
like Terrance Hayes, Rilke, CK Williams,
Galway Kinnell, and one very important player --
James Wright. "Saint Judas" was the first poem
I memorized and loved. That was nine years ago.
Robert Frost was my first love, but I was but
a tiny boy. I was not yet writing.

"Saint Judas", so accessible in its reference,
is consistently amazing, line after line:

Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.

Such a poem does not hide from the audience
what it means, can be argued accessible by
the Christian-dominated world we live,
and yet, there are layers to this poem.
There is something to return to, whether
it's the sounds, the logic, the re-shaping
of the common figure that draws us in.

I challenge anyone to write a line as connotatively
powerful as the penultimate or final line.

C'est Mars

2009-03-01T15:56:00.000+01:00

C'est Mars, et je suis reveiller un travel

Ah, Paris, how we do miss you, as it snows in Chicago. If only money bloomed off trees. Perhaps, perhaps,...perhaps.

I think for our one-year, in June, we'll be doing something nature-oriented. I'd like to get to Olympic National Park, or Muir Woods in San Francisco.

teaching makes me feel like mono

2009-02-25T05:33:00.000+01:00

or what I assume mono would feel like on the human body. Constant physical fatigue.

But, the semester is going quickly. It never went this fast as a student.

Monday I got proofs for Gulf Coast and Prairie Schooner. I mention this because it's strange to get both on the same day; a pleasant strange.

I actually sent out postal mail submissions. Just two to two of my favorite journals - NER and Cincy Review. My subscription to Cincy Review is done, and it's been a year or so since I submitted my monthly batch of rejected poems from them!

I like exclamation points.

I believe I have a solid, multi-layered name for the manny now. I've got to give my undergrad mentor a time so he can thrash the contents through the phone lines, though.... Or at least, I am submitting myself up to be thrashed, in case it's not a thrashing.

I'm still considering taking out one of the sections, but I am not sure it needs to be. It's nice to see that the manny has evolved in the last two years, so quickly and without much intentional thought of what I need to write into it. The MFA term "organic" comes to mind when thinking of how the last two years staying out of the po-scenes have been for my writing.

_____________

Now, if readers from one of the most prestigious journals would fall in love with my work the way they are supposed to (!). And I mean, beyond personally rejecting the work...Poetry, Kenyon, Virginia Q., NER, Atlantic, Boston, Ploughshares, Paris, New Yorker, The Southern Review...please?

Of course, I need to send work to The Atlantic, Paris, NYer, or the Southern R. Rrrrrrrrrgh. I do have stamps now.

Other places I want send to but haven't because of no time to sit down and print off postal subs: Mid-American, Pleiades, Shenandoah, Cimarron, Passages North, Hayden's Ferry, Colorado, Denver Q. are some I hope to send to. There are others, some on-line.

da bulls

2009-02-19T01:45:00.000+01:00

trading for brad miller, redux, are still a guard-heavy team. Salmons plays Deng's position. Great. Two 18pt./gm players at the same position. Or Salmons at Gordon's sg. Great, our best shooter will be gone.

adding new choices

2009-02-18T05:44:00.000+01:00

1) father belongs to the river

2) River Songs of Defiance

3) Defiance, OH

no cigar this time

2009-01-30T20:32:00.000+01:00

Ah, Indiana Review was impressed, again, but not enough.
Send more work, Christopher! (Checked my e-mail to that message.)

Senior Seminar just ended for the week-- and we had a healthy discussion of American culture and how technology and social factors are leading towards a more blurred American identity.

I had them read an article called "The End of White America?" from The Atlantic (Monthly). It's a fantastic read, thought-provoking but (for me) not incinerating. I'd like to hear/ read what cultural studies academics think.

nice, concise poem and doomsday

2009-01-26T03:05:00.000+01:00

From Diode:

ASH BOWEN

There Was No Funeral

because death doesn’t stagger, it walks
on arched toes, hangs sheets
over mirrors,

because soon the house will fill with no one
who saw you lift your skirt, wade
into ether,

because I will undress the bed, thread
by thread,

because I still have business
in this world.

Shirl Brunell (1934—2006)

________________

Reading about whether technology and culture are good buddies. From the creator of computer software and one of the designers of UNIX and Java and Sun Microsystems, comes this great line that I am going to use as inspiration and preface for a poem:

"And even if we scatter to the stars isn't it likely that we may take our problems with us or find, later, that they have followed us?"

Bill Joy, from "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us"

AWP

2009-01-25T00:21:00.000+01:00

is in Chicago, and I live in Chicago, and yet I am not attending (or haven't registered).

I am working, with classes that fill up Thursday and Friday. And I didn't register, and it didn't occur to me until December to ask anyone in the MFA/ English Department at Columbia for a registration. Columbia is sponsoring.

I have not yet been to an AWP conference. I'd like to see Art Spiegelman give his speech/reading, since I taught Maus in my lit class last fall.

_________

I had a lovely dinner last night with my friend Brian Russell (his work is awesome), his wife, my wife, and James Reiss (fantastic poet and mentor) and his classically-trained lady Mary Jo (French trained chef, retired restauranteur). It was great to have great food and entertaining conversation.

__________

Tonight I am hanging with some other awesome friends, who have unknowingly inspired a novel-in-progress/process (currently in the outlining stages).

_________

I can't believe we've lived in Chicago for going on five years.

revising poems in the manuscript

2009-01-24T21:38:00.000+01:00

and saw the wordle-thingy again; this time on Gary McDowell's website and gave it a whirl for once:

confession

2009-01-22T20:58:00.000+01:00

Techno music wants me to watch the movie Kids.

_______________

On another musical note, if you are an American Idol fanatic (like me), and you want some good music, I suggest going to iTunes and looking up Josiah Leming. I prefer his five songs to David Cook's cookie-cut album. And I read that he has an entire album coming out in March.

Leming's songs are of the Jamie Cullum, Rufus Wainright and an old never-made-it-big band called Palo Alto, and a couple of other bands in the same vain as PA. Good piano, nicely haunted writing, and aching vocals.

Also, Michael Johns has an album coming soon, and just finished a documentary soundtrack for Shaun White, on which he is the vocalist for every song. I say this since I want to remember to check for his album.

after an amazing inauguration

2009-01-21T05:34:00.000+01:00

I must say, why is Michigan's basketball team collapsing in Big Ten play? Seriously, as if I didn't cry enough today, even if those earlier tears were of a different, enthusiastic and human-affirming kind.

Dear Manny Harris and Co., please start to win again, and learn to drive the ball inside instead of loving the hail mary.

There is nothing I can add to the profundity and the poetry that was Obama's speech, other than that he made Elizabeth Alexander's poem a bit anti-climactic and redundant (or perhaps it was reverberation). Though I am a fan of her work, her reading was a bit mechanical.

PS(st): I will say, however, after reading some Internet chatter, that I do think the poem was lovely, overall, with moments of great imagery (one of our ancestors on our tongue) and an appropriate metaphor of stitch/repair,and a few spots that I didn't care for (odd placement of "boom box" within the line, and contextually/historically within the poem).

But really, people, those who consider themselves poets, you know you are just mad that her reading style was constipated (with good reason, thanks to Obama's skill at speaking and brining in the crowds).

For those who wanted a less clear poem, get over your aesthetic inclinations for the moment. The moment. Chances are, your kind of poem won't last anyway, but Alexander's kind will. Her poem makes sense, is moving, has clarity and purpose. What does yours mostly have, but some cleverness, some word play, some academic reference, some un-musical dissociative garble? Fantastic, show the every day American that poetry must strip emotion and make us scratch our heads, and pour and pour our time into the bowl you so cleverly sculpted. Then realize, if you spend all your time shaping, then it's a tool with no heart, just a bit of ingenuity.

Favorite Journals / Goals

2009-01-19T17:26:00.000+01:00

Here is a list of my favorite reads / goal journals to be published in:

1. Prairie Schooner - a great quarterly, always a few pieces that sing to me. I am still giddy they took "Father Belongs to the River," and that it will come out in the summer.

2. Mid-American Review - grew up 45 minutes west of BG. I stopped submitting there more than a year ago, I think. I was getting personal rejections and then a submission took 9 months or so and I was not getting any responses to queries so I sent a new submission. That submission was rejected. Since then, I've given space to MAR and me. Perhaps I will start trying again when I start sending mail submissions again?

3. AGNI - just always, always has a poem or story to blow my mind. Perhaps 1b if it weren't for my appeal to history, logical fallacy aside. I have had personal rejections in the past from AGNI, but I've also had more form rejections. And since they've gone on-line I am form-for-two!

4. Kenyon Review - Last spring David Lynn, the editor, e-mailed me to reject my work and deemed my work publishable. This is another great journal out of my home state. In fact, it is also hard not to rank number 1. I have sent work there, though it is hard to send here as a young writer trying to pick up credits for one's manuscript. They don't allow simultaneous submissions. Do people follow these rules? I know some that do, others that don't -- and am curious to know how others deal with such guidelines.

5. Southern Review - great journal, historic, and with a nice design and direction.

6. Gulf Coast - a healthy dose of literature in each issue. Put out my Houston's program, nicely formatted, with a variety of voices. I am honored to grace its pages in a pretty near future issue.

7. Boston Review - variety, political, with poems that hardly ever make me scream, "They published this? They felt this a good poem?" I am sure others out there know what I am talking about. This is why so many smaller journals get such fantastic poems. Big journals fall into an appeals to history, popularity, authority, and are victim to the bandwagon. Not complaining, because it is certainly not a surprise to me that editors are people too, and are therefore in line to follow the same psychological and sociological responses practices of humanity at-large.

8. DIAGRAM - still my favorite on-line journal, and really is so much more than just on-line. Great schematics, good diversity of writing, and great lay out /readability. I haven't submitted here since they published my poem, but I've certainly wanted to. It's hard trying to get a variety of publication credits, which is what I am fighting. The other side, I want my work to be read, but in journals that I actually read and have amicable feelings towards.

I knew a person who blindly submitted to any journal, just trying to get currency credits. I won't pimp out my poems just to tack another credit in the manuscript.
9. Indiana Review
10. Crab Orchard
11. Ninth Letter - since personally rejecting the poem take by Boxcar Poetry Review, nothing but form rejections (tear). However, they have the prettiest little designs.
12. Boxcar Poetry Review - a great on-line journal, one I love to read.
13. Cincinnati Review -
14. Jubilat
15. Third Coast - I actually struggle with putting it higher, but there are many great journals out there, and some of which are listed higher simply because I have not attained my goal of getting in those journals. Still, a fantastic journal from a fantastic writing program --which gave me so much more from my month in Prague. Great friends, and that city still lingers in my mind.
16. Cimarron Review - another that could be higher. I enjoy the covers and the poetry a lot.
17. New Orleans Review
18. The Atlantic (Monthly)
19. Poetry
20. Crazyhorse
21. Ploughshares

going lighter

2009-01-19T17:14:00.001+01:00

Where some like to fake-bake in these harsh winters.

I like lightness, and so the blog undergoes its change.

Funny, considering my face has gotten redder from last weeks
negative-degree wind storms.

euphemisms: dear journals

2009-01-19T05:43:00.000+01:00

I'm sorry, but I find your rejection letter, well, it's, ...just not a right fit for me.

I've mentioned this before, but I find the phrasing to be very awkward, and it's used a lot in the submission-manager rejections. I wonder, are mechanical form letters part of the package when journals decide to buy and use the submission manager program? Or is it just a larger po-biz culture phrase that has grown like mold over the past few years? Or, has "just not a right fit for us" been used for decades? I didn't notice it so much when I first started submitting poetry my 2nd semester in grad school, but more and more it's the same, uninspired rejection.

Yes, I get it. It's a form rejection. But I find this phrase particularly clunky, and I just had two back-to-back rejections and found them to be amusing, or annoying, since I think I'm allergic to the phrase. I guess the poems are too tight for the magazines? Oh, snap, damn, no you didn't. Just turned "right fit" on its back. Daaaaaaamn. Tight.

Aren't blogs stupid? Or. don't they allow for stupidity, lil' nuggets of insanity. And as a writer, aware of readers, I can't help but think of what uptight person will think I'm just being cranky, and those who think I'm just not funny. Oh, the great part of having blogs is that they're like dry skin. Flaky, translucent and carried off in a slight breeze.

Dear Writer:

We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but unfortunately this submission was not a right fit for jubilat.

Thank you for trying us.

Sincerely,

The Editors of jubilat

.....

Dear Writer:

Thanks for submitting your work to Ninth Letter. We're sorry this submission wasn't right for us. We appreciate your interest in our magazine, and wish you the best of luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,

The Editors
Ninth Letter

aye gawd says zora neale hurston

2009-01-15T16:58:00.000+01:00

it's negative nine degrees outside . . . with a high scheduled at -1 for the day!!!

perhaps

2009-01-15T05:18:00.001+01:00

the cold that won't leave my brain is causing a lapse in writing.
I have so many things to write about, and yet only notes and scribbles
come out.

I've been reading and appreciating more poems on-line,
and prepping for classes, and started at one school this week.

it seems weird, but I have to ask my wife if she wants to file a joint
tax return. today is our 7th month of marriage, and fast has it been.
only five more months before we can eat our frozen cake!

I have so many books, many fully read, some barely touched, some
read and forgotten. Lorca is at eye level, and he is staring. C.K.
Williams name is in a huge font, competing. The sudoku puzzles
are begging me to challenge them, only I've done the hardest
and shelved the books though the easiest are all that's left.
I have a hard time recycling them, since they're half naked.

Mayakovsky was a great wedding gift I need to read.
Dylan Thomas' biography is in the median of the bow of the shelf
just above Lorca and my other collecteds. Tried and tried
to read the life of Mr. Thomas but the prose of Andrew Lycett
is at times too droll and thick for me. I don't have the time
for Henry James detail, good sir. Simply tell me the sordid details.

I keep thinking of the concentration camp of Terezin that I visited
while studying the summer in Prague, and how there is a poem
somewhere fighting my stubborn ways.

See, I don't find it appropriate in many ways, to write about the camp
without falling back on the Holocaust and its natural sentiment.
I don't like when, as a distant witness, writers try to speak for political
and human movements (redundant, yes) they were not involved in.

I have, however, written other successful poems from my experiences
from 2005 in other places. Including the poem Crab Orchard published
on a church that used Bubonic Plague bones in its decor. So far from Ikea
were the Dark Ages!

I also wrote years ago a poem on my spiritual conflicts using as subject
the Jewish cemetery in Prague's Josefov district

Perhaps my difficulty stems from not knowing exactly what Terezin symbolizes
to me. The images are clear, but how to write them, and under what metaphorical
exploration I don't know yet. And it's paining me.

In my Adolsecent Lit class last fall we read Art Spiegelman's Maus, and in the second
part there's a moment where Terezin is brought up. I showed my class pics
of the place, and described it. Since then, the ashes of a burgeoning poem have been
exactly that, ashes. Oh, the images. The midget tunnels, the gates, the walls,
the white-dotted death markers just outside, the barn swallows nesting in the archway.
The gas showers. The museum preserving children's refrigerator-worthy art.

The quarter field, all dust, where people were cajoled into playing soccer
when the Red Cross inspectors came to investigate. The 10 by 10 foot hole
where 100 were stuffed like . . . sardines!

There's so much there, yet how to write, and what to write. An overload of images
and the music escapes me. It escapes me.

from Boston Review

2009-01-11T07:45:00.000+01:00

I never had Suzanne Buffam as a teacher,
and her reading her first book was pretty boring,
but I was told how wonderful a teacher she was,
and she seems to be a nice person, very intelligent
from the chats I've encountered or been part of.

Anyways, heere's another fantastic poem by a writer
I've personally encountered during my time as an official
student -- since I always consider myself such a studious
person.

READ THIS
AND ENJOY

VQR

2009-01-10T03:33:00.000+01:00

As my head tries to stop
spinning, with medicine
I read this poem
and again I am content
to be a reader of poetry.
And it makes me write posts
in half verse, prose in lineation.

Weather was dangerous today.
It's dangerous every day somewhere
I guess. But today for the drive
the snow slithered across the lanes
chasing tires. With front wheel drive
our car's fish-tailing felt like a ghetto
booty, heavy and a constant jiggle
left to right, a sway not a sway
that kept our tongues rammed
against the walls of our mouths.

jubilat

2009-01-06T08:41:00.001+01:00

Check out these poems by William Waltz and this beauty by one of my MFA teachers, Arielle Greenberg.

There's also a poem in the current issue by Ian Harris, so I'm going to have to get a copy of this issue. I'm in love at 2:43 a.m. with Brian's Brain. I'm in love with poetry at this quiet hour.

My wife curls and clenches in her sleep.

So many stories over break, and no time to write.

I received another personal rejection from New York Quarterly. I can feel it coming close, Phil Collins!

Our mail is not being forwarded successfully from Chicago to Ohio. No surprise, but disappointing still.
How can only one of two Netflix movies shipped at the same time make it?

American Sublime

2008-12-20T06:40:00.000+01:00

That's one of the books (I own this one) by inauguration poet Elizabeth Alexander, who is apparently good friends of Obama.

Dear POETRY

2008-12-16T00:52:00.000+01:00

Are you really sorry to say you're not keeping anything from my submission?

Sincerely,

one day

2008-12-15T18:17:00.000+01:00

Redivider, you will take a poem (or two) from me one day!

Personal rejection number 3 or 4 from your fine journal, I feel excitedly ...

excited. At least I'm not slipping backwards on the ice!

***

It's f-in' cold in Chicago today. Five degrees. The dog is in a sweater

and still shivering.

I cramped my hands (and froze them) cleaning the ice storm

off two cars.

end of semester

2008-12-09T02:15:00.001+01:00

I've had a very calming final weeks, so far. The papers will be pouring in through e-mail and my school mailbox tomorrow. But, there's something empowering about the last set of papers.

The Bears won. The Wolverines beat the no. 4 Blue Devils (and yet didn't make the Top 25?).

And, I wrote two poems since Thursday. I hadn't finished a poem or gotten past a few lines since the end of October at the earliest.

Last night I went to see my mentor, James Reiss, and here you can hear him, read with a bunch of others at Uncommon Ground up in Edgewater. Kristy Bowen also read, including a poem we took for CPR when I was a grad student editor and a poem in her new collection that we'd workshopped in class. That was cool.

Time for din din.

coast to coast

2008-11-25T01:55:00.000+01:00

Yes, my "To ___" series continues to find homes. Yay for River Songs.

Third Coast accepted "To the Rivers:" tonight. That meant taking the time

to withdraw the poem from other places, but it made me forget my end

of semester migraine brought on by the piling work and the stress

of student confusion, etc. I've been trying to get in this magazine

for the last three years, since doing the whole Prague Summer Program.

Persistence!

Thanks, Gary, and I am happy the poem found such great readers,

and a great home.

Now, is there another coast out there to hit?

I'm very happy that my goal journals are starting to get met.

Now, hanging out with my friend Matt the musician. We haven't seen

Matt since October. So, this calls for not finishing off a couple of essays

to grade.

man u script

2008-11-15T19:54:00.000+01:00

sent to two more places today. that makes it six places this fall, in the last two weeks.

that is more than the four times I sent it out in the past.

I'd love if Father Belongs to the River made semi-finalist in any

of the competitions. I remember reading in early September

where some bloggers (ones I don't read and don't have on my list)

tooted their own horns by stating how they didn't like or care

about being named a semi-finalist! That this kind of acknowledgment

is apparently too good shocked me. I can understand being frustrated

because I don't know a serious writer who hasn't been (most

of the time, too).

But, I'd be happy with that kind of acknowledgement.

The most I've gotten was from Cleveland State's First Book

competition where one of the editors noted their favorite poem

in pencil on the announcement of the winning manuscript.

Not only did I like that they commented, but they used a pencil,

which I think is too neglected because of these pen thingys.

HOPE

2008-11-05T06:50:00.000+01:00

Yes.

2008-10-30T23:50:00.000+01:00

My hometown with McCain. Oh, the varsity jackets! Oh, the girl on the right - who is one of my sister's-in-law best friends. That would be McCain's left, viewer's right.

Oh...and why is McCain a liar? And why does he think I want to own a small business? I want to write books. I want to teach students how to critically think, so they don't have to be robots who clap mindlessly at such ver-bage. No, not verbiage. Verbage. Verbal Garbage.

And isn't it funny that Joe the Plumber wasn't there and McCain didn't know. Now I am just being snotty.

McPalin

2008-10-29T00:56:00.000+01:00

So, John McCain is speaking in my hometown, on the stage

where I spent many youthful days, getting awards, misspelling

words like rosette in bees, so I could escape

the wave of middle school eyes drowning the smart

with their tiny laughs.

Even though the article says the location is not solidified,

my inside sources say it is.

Sadly, I've also heard that some Red gunslingers are burning

Obama signs. This disturbs me greatly, that Defiance (A Great

Place to Live) is so scared of having a black president.

I never realized how tight to the vest my hometown was

until this year. Even in 2004 I didn't open my eyes enough.

grrrrrrrrreat

2008-10-27T06:37:00.001+01:00

not complaining, but as soon as I printed off my awesome looking resume...I have a new publication to add to it.

Gulf Coast took a poem from a series I was writing back in the beginning of the year, an epistolary poem series of sorts. The one that they took is called "To Recession:" and I really consider it the most political poem I've written. However, the subject within the poem is actually not economic recession, but recession of winter and life, an intentional irony, considering a recession of winter usually means life!

I also call the poem part of my drowning river songs series -- each of the three currently in the series discusses different drownings that have happened in the Auglaize or Maumee Rivers. I am fond of these poems, and I am happy that a great journal will showcase one of them.

I hope some of the other great journals the others are at will give audience to the rest of the series!

For now, I am thankful that for this one, and for the end of a 13 hour grading day. Yes, thirteen straight hours of grading papers. With two short eating breaks.

This is what my life is like. Grading papers. Etc. Etc. Happy moments. Etc. Etc. Oh, yeah, I have a hot wife. Etc. Etc.

2008-10-24T23:57:00.000+02:00

Some very pathetic people stole our Obama sign and tossed

the metal frame in front of the apartment.

Lynn and I believe it was the a-holes above us, who had

a party last night; a party of some kind that involved

just a bunch of banal girls screaming and stomping

their feet.

Lynn heard one of them before going up the backstairs

talking about how she was Republican and didn't like

the sign. Too f-ing back, people.

How immature people can be. And this just after

going to Trader Joe's and Target and being inundated

with how rude and impatient people are.

Why yes, as I am deciding which cheese I want why

don't you just glide in front of me and my cart

and have your entire body brush mine.

I must be invisible. I must have forgotten my physics

rules, the one's that state that two objects with mass

can occupy the same space simultaneously!

The nerve. My nerves. Our nerves.

hear that funky DJ

2008-10-22T00:59:00.000+02:00

Variations on a Text by Vallejo
BY DONALD JUSTICE

Me moriré en Paris con aguacero ...

I will die in Miami in the sun,
On a day when the sun is very bright,
A day like the days I remember, a day like other days,
A day that nobody knows or remembers yet,
And the sun will be bright then on the dark glasses of strangers
And in the eyes of a few friends from my childhood
And of the surviving cousins by the graveside,
While the diggers, standing apart, in the still shade of the palms,
Rest on their shovels, and smoke,
Speaking in Spanish softly, out of respect.

I think it will be on a Sunday like today,
Except that the sun will be out, the rain will have stopped,
And the wind that today made all the little shrubs kneel down;
And I think it will be a Sunday because today,
When I took out this paper and began to write,
Never before had anything looked so blank,
My life, these words, the paper, the gray Sunday;
And my dog, quivering under a table because of the storm,
Looked up at me, not understanding,
And my son read on without speaking, and my wife slept.

Donald Justice is dead. One Sunday the sun came out,
It shone on the bay, it shone on the white buildings,
The cars moved down the street slowly as always, so many,
Some with their headlights on in spite of the sun,
And after awhile the diggers with their shovels
Walked back to the graveside through the sunlight,
And one of them put his blade into the earth
To lift a few clods of dirt, the black marl of Miami,
And scattered the dirt, and spat,
Turning away abruptly, out of respect.

esp

2008-10-18T05:58:00.000+02:00

n-zone baby!

Lynn and I were going to Lawry's for dinner, a date.

Anyone who knows Chicago enough knows it is by

the ESPNZone restaurant.

Funny thing, as we were getting close to it I said,

one of my students has seen someone famous here.

Then, as we cross the street Lynn hears some guy

thanking another guy for all the Sunday entertainment.

I turned around and recognized that it was, indeed,

a Chicago Bear. Sadly, I couldn't remember that

it was Desmond Clark until it was too late!

So far we've spotted Devin Hester running on the lake

path this past summer, and we once were going

to Navy Pier when former Bear fumbler Bobby Wade

(now a Viking) came out of one of the condos down there

and brushed by us with a couple of friends, himself

wearing Bears sweat pants and his big fro. Funny

that he was cut a week or so later for sucking!

Rex Grossman's sister was mugged in our neighborhood,

which leads me to believe he lives around here.

I often joke that he lives in one of the awesome places with a garage.

We love celeb sightings. Sure, we've seen celebs and TV Top Chef

Stephanie (twice), who lives in our 'hood.

Okay, this is seeming silly now. But, I saw Desmond Clark.

He's tall.

fantastic poem from my fav mag

2008-10-09T20:07:00.000+02:00

I showered with him this morning . . .

I love the metaphor, work done with the scale.

And Lynn loves black licorice. Icky.

Beautiful poem.

***

I have food poisoning. Last night was our 1 year

anniversary of the day I proposed (and she said,

"Are you fucking kidding me? Yes.").

We ate from our favorite Spanish restaurant.

Having it delivered, it delivered us!

I am starting to feel better, however.

And so is Lynn.

re-reading

2008-10-05T02:57:00.000+02:00

the giver, for my literature for adolescents course. ah, i remember feeling like jonas. poor chap. lucky chap.

we had a very good first class of discussion over a creative non-fiction piece by Rigoberto Gonzalez, on his coming of age. in an issue of crab orchard review, as suggested by a newly known

reader of this blog! thank you lara, for reminding me of that issue. i had stored it on my shelf with an intention of reading at a later time. you gave me that later time.

i also had the class read Gonzalez' blogging for the Poetry Foundation, and we read two of his poems. too bad i didn't have enough time to go and get one of his children's books to give an excerpt from. alas.

at the end of class, i was highly complemented by a couple of students. i was told, you are a teacher. not good or bad or any adjective necessary.

i am a teacher. these are the kinds of compliments that make the grind worthwhile. once, joan larkin told me, you are a poet. yes, i will take what i can get, like any other human, needy.

those times that erase doubt, if only for the present early future.

billingsley

2008-10-04T02:20:00.000+02:00

i was hoping Cubs 1, Dodgers 0, for last night's game. i wanted

chad to do well, but i wanted the Cubbies to win.

Paul Newman is one of the great people of the 20th century

2008-09-27T17:03:00.000+02:00

Cut, clarity and color. Qualities sought.

Qualities that reflect light from a stone,

sparkle out of dull earth.

I owe Paul Newman my wife. We watched his movies in the loft,

learning what we wanted from each other in marathons.

I would study how she laughed at the muscular comedy

of Slapshot and thought I wasn't strong enough.

She watched him beat a parking meter, swallow fifty boiled eggs

and saw a man's heart chained to others in the ditches.

We watched him in a trenchcoat, the rain, the riddle

of bullets after giving one son for another.

He is charity and he played the man that needed.

He is that man that men admire, that women collapse

their hearts for. My wife asked me not to die.

I married her with the promise of his eyes and aging

ruggedly. With the sacrifice of gray hair.

All all of us can do, all any of us can expect.

2008-09-27T08:29:00.000+02:00

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Not.

Not, who?

Not Sarah Palin.

(drum roll, please.)

fantastic poem

2008-09-27T00:46:00.000+02:00

featured for good reason at POETRY.

Letterman

2008-09-26T20:47:00.000+02:00

Still mad, DL's Top 10 last night was on Top 10 Surprising Facts About Sarah Palin presented by residents of Wasilla, Alaska:

Number 2 is hysterical: "To improve her foreign policy experience, she recently went to the International House of Pancakes
-Deputy Mayor and Chiropractor, Kris Larson"

oh yeah: adolescent literature

2008-09-25T18:28:00.000+02:00

so, does anyone know of a good short short story / poetry in the adolescent genre?

I've been searching a little, wanting to start of my class the first week with something quick.

I'm excited for the course. I have at least 14 students in the class, which would be the best number to stay around.

oh, the drama

2008-09-25T18:22:00.000+02:00

so my right foot started to feel sore yesterday at the top of my shoelace. when I finally took my shoes off, I noticed that the bone juts up a bit. nuts. it is still sore today. Lynn thinks it may be time to finally go see a doctor, if the foot continues to hurt. it has been my left foot that went numb as we ran long distances, and now this.

I think it has to deal with either a rubbing of the vessels, or a sprain of the tendon/ligaments

in my foot. I've gotten sharp cramps in the same place when swimming, etc.

2008-09-25T05:28:00.000+02:00

I want to hear the debates. McCain is making a smart move by bailing out

and painting it as in our interest. We're to imagine he's really sitting at his

desk in Washington and figuring out how to fix the market, and surprise,

we are being scared by our president. The CNN headlines, the CBS news

headlines, are saying that we could be in for immediate impact, for

a second Great Depression. George Bush is an economic terrorist,

instilling the same fear in we the people! Will that get me on some

FBI list? I don't know. I'm just espousing a clear link in his rhetoric.

I am afraid. Shit, our standard of living is to survive. If it were true

then that really sucks. But I don't have any loans but student loans

and credit card debt. I continue to pay off more than the minimum

on the cc debt at least. I'd like a bailout, please. I educate for a living.

Where is my bonus? My rebate. I chose to go to a school with crappy

funding, but I give back like businesses give back. I benefit the populace.

Right? Making thinking beings think more clearly, write with more

passion, interest, and depth.

McCain seems scared but smart. I can't trust a skeleton with no neck,

though.

Yes, he's a senator, but I have to side with my liberal hemisphere.

This man who thought the economy was okay days ago, afraid

of talking about the economy in this run for president, doesn't

want to get in front of cameras and outline what he'd do as

leader of this country? No, not this virtual country we call

blogs, but the dirt and steel we've mixed with our own hands.

At this point, he should be ready to debate even if he does spend

tomorrow in Washington. It shouldn't be hard to understand

and argue for why he wants to be president and what he thinks

he can do to fix things. I mean, dude, you had years and years

to put together your ideas for this country. And you need to . . .

get back to DC to help big banks. Hello, sir, were have you been

for the last year?

Here's why it's okay that Obama and McCain should be

ready to debate Friday. They can prove their worth for the seat

by showing their influence goes beyond just the vote they'd

mark in the Senate. They'd prove their ability TO LEAD

in this time of great crisis.

Anyways, I can't articulate it well enough right now.

I am going to listen to David Letterman trash on McCain

for ditching his show. Yep, four jokes and so far all of them

on McCain or Palin.

wrote a poem draft

2008-09-23T19:10:00.000+02:00

this early noon. for a distant friend. a poet who I admire. re-reading

HDT's "Walking" and WW's "The world is too much with us" and ardor

for fall. well. I was inspired. too. by a writing prompt. I give my basic

writing class students. something I call. Word Mash.

I am working on. trying to. incorporate outside the speaker. in. my. work.

I got more sleep than I had. since the semester started.

the thing I'm most happy about. is that. whether I write. about

something happy. or something sad. my own spirit is joyed

by writing. it only took a year. for the dark cloud to dissipate.

I have such wonderful students. such life in them. and my wife.

my wife. my wife. my life.

damn

2008-09-22T14:06:00.000+02:00

Jon Niese, who went to my high school and before that played on the same Little League team a year after I moved on to Babe Ruth, is pitching for the Mets tonight against the Cubs.

I'd love to watch it. He's the second former Baker-Shindler/DHS guy to make the big leagues. Chad Billingsley was on my team, his dad was our coach (and my 7th grade WR coach in Jr. High football), and picked me as the Sportsmanship Award-winner for our team. So, this is why it was important all year for Chad to anchor my fantasy team. Chad was raised well, and was one of the nicest kids you'd ever meet. He's had a great year, and I keep rooting for him to do well. He deserves it. Plus, he is kind of living a real fantasy that a lot of young boys have growing up. Especially in my hometown, where football rules the Fall and baseball the Spring.

Chad Reineke is also in the pros. He went to Miami at the same time I did, but he is from a different high school - one of the "country" high schools. So I don't know him at all. Other than by name. But it is really cool to have three guys from Defiance, Ohio all pitching in MLB at the same time.

Go Cubbies! Go Dodgers! I'll be at a classical music concert tonight supporting our French horn, also known as Erin.

I'm going to be exhausted. Wake up at 6am, teach from 9am until 5pm. Concert at 8pm. Oh, I hope I don't fall asleep.

Have a good day, y'all. Time to shower.

2008-09-21T23:03:00.000+02:00

disappointed in the Bears' loss. Stupid bs call on Peanut. Going to grade papers and try to feel better. I have felt like I have mono since Wednesday.

Going to start skimming Lois Lowry books for my adolescent literature course on Tuesday, trying to clear my schedule for that. Actually need to get

verification that class is still running, considering in the past my lit. classes have been cancelled last minute. I wish my usernname and password

was working properly.

quickly up!

2008-09-21T19:52:00.000+02:00

So you can check out my work at Boxcar Poetry Review.

The e-mail address is wrong right now, so if you try e-mailing

me there should be a second n in there. The k in my last name

is boxed-in by ns, get it! Bad pun intended.

four sections

2008-09-20T06:28:00.000+02:00

Below are my current sections of my manuscript father belongs to the river, along with a quasi summary of each section. I've gone from none to two to three to four to three to four sections over the last two years. I've only sent out

the ms. about six times, six places. One time I sent it to myself, by accident!

What do people think of the titles, the bulking of poems into sections, anything you want to say? I tried to just put poems that felt right/were obviously connected together rather than overly analyzing each poems meaning, etc.

There are many elegies, many elegiac poems. I also find a lot of Romance and dark humor. But, that is me, and me is the writer. And the writer has littler distance than you. So, speak, please, speak.

I. River Elegies

- father poems

- poems that locate death around rivers

- the fluid thought of death, my father's, and how that influenced life

II. A Museum of Communism, and Other Travel

- Prague poems, religion

- Community v. loneliness

- cross-cultural death bond

- elegies for cities, history, and George Carlin

III. Defiance, Ohio

- questions of local faith

- familial deaths - cousin

- probably where "To Death, Specifically:" letter poem will go once I am happy.

- brother poems

IV. A Cluster of Galaxies Collapsing in the Universe of Their Mouths

- love poems (gives lightness to end, and some clearer humor)

- redemptive poems?

- poems of movement

- "space poems" or "atomic poems"

- the most obvious poems of universality.

personal record

2008-09-18T20:31:00.001+02:00

perusing the poetry off the shelf series, I see that CK Williams is reading at the Art Institute on Saturday, September 27.

And that Adam Zagajewski is coming October 9th.

Perhaps I will venture out on these days. Though I don't want to stutter in front of CK Williams. No. No. I don't. And this is what happens in front of people I admire, or at least, people who do something that I admire. Since I don't actually know the person!

Also, it's much easier to stay in on a saturday afternoon and watch UofM hopefully beat Wisconsin. I love football this much.

Or I dislike readings that much more. We'll see.

third post in third hour of wake

2008-09-18T17:06:00.000+02:00

blame the coffee. blame the fatigue. i need to escape the buildings. trumps

glassy shadow over the chicago. blame the three days of ike and the vacuum

sun that followed. i want to eat a gourd. i want to scoop the meat with a baby

spoon. at the farmers market. i want to rest my hands on the dogs who must

love the chaos more than me.

speaking of good coffee

2008-09-18T16:42:00.000+02:00

we have five great kinds of coffee. three are from Archer Farms (Target). peruvian satipo (i like more than lynn). kona blend (we both love this a lot, hawai'in blends rock). and haitian bleu dark roast. we're also both loving this one. it reminds me of my white coffee from ireland. milk and haitian blue. then, i have my Michigan Cherry from the great shop in back in Defiance. almost out, and every time i go to make it lynn has left too much ground coffee in the grinder. and i can't waste good coffee! we also were given a whole thing of starbucks columbian something roast from lynn's t.a., who works at starbucks as she finishes up at DePaul. awesome.

fantastic poem from APR Mar./Apr. issue

2008-09-18T15:26:00.000+02:00

I have seen Dickman's work everywhere since first seeing them in the Boston Review. Then he won last year's APR/Honickman First Book Award. I loved the poems in the New Yorker. Here's a gorgeous poem that makes me want to eat it for breakfast, push it down with some good coffee. (I've already been up since 7am and I don't have to teach today. Oh, Fall.)

Matthew Dickman
Roma

Last night my neighbor was looking a little enlightened,
you know, the way bodies do
after spending the afternoon having sex
on an old couch while responsible people are suffering
with their clothes on in cubicles and libraries.
He had that look vegetables get
in really nice grocery stores where the tomatoes aren't just red
they're goddamn red!
He was like that. Like a glowing, off-the-vine Roma
sitting in his living room picking pineapple off a Hawaiian pizza
and telling me about his father who was a real mother
fucker. I ask him if he still loved his dad, or if he loved him more
now that he is dead. Sure, he says, I love anything that's dead.
Someone's hand floats up onto the beach
while the body is still lost below the current, a vase of lilacs
turned brown, the black archipelago of mourners marching
up the hill. My neighbor is there to greet each of them
with a box of chocolates and a barbershop quartet in the background.
When my father died, he says opening a beer, he was no longer
my father. He was no longer a man. It's easy to love things
when they're powerless, like children and goldfish.
This is the way with enlightened people. They say things
that are so infuriatingly simple when the world is not.
So I put down my Pepsi and pull out the big card.
What about Hitler? I ask. You can't love Hitler!
My neighbor puts a piece of pineapple on his tongue like a sacrament,
sucks the juice out of it, chews it up, then turns
his head slow like a cloud and says I can love anybody I feel like loving.
And I say that's ridiculous.
And he says what's ridiculous is that you don't. And there he is again,
shining in the grocery store, pulling the bow off
the heart-shaped candies and putting one softly into his father's mouth.

sweet

2008-09-16T02:35:00.000+02:00

After discussing things with a student who missed the first two weeks of class, I checked my e-mail and was shocked, and giddy, to see that Boxcar Poetry Review took a poem. "Waltz Down Rue des Halles."

sweet. with sweet on top.

third post of day!

2008-09-15T05:53:00.001+02:00

so, two of the poems I just sent to Quarterly West were picked up by Burnside Review. I am really excited, as "The Last Living Primitives" was finally taken after four journals just said no after nearly saying yes. You know who you are A, H, R and N. I'd say your names, but I didn't want to be to brass. Just a little. I figure, I have posted so many rejections and never really "announced" through a post when a poem is "picken up." I mean, picked up. I also mean to say, I am excited that they were taken by a good journal who has published poems by some of my favorite writers-of-now: Alberto Rios, Amy Gerstler, Ray Gonzalez (need to read more of this guy's work but what I've read I've loved), David St. John, and Paul Guest. I'd put up a poem by Guest, but I must go to bed here in a second so I can function and focus tomorrow in class. But, read this poem from their current issue. It's Mia Michaels a-maaazing.

Just finished watching the Browns lose to Big Ben while re-reading some of Crush as I look to revise a poem with the same kind of lines and poly-tonality of one voice as the dream poems in Siken's awesome debut.

That said, forget me and please read up on the Election campaigns. Please. As a teacher I can't push my vote on to students. So, this election I must do what I can.

Palin gives 95k/year job to high school friend

2008-09-15T04:07:00.000+02:00

who like cows.

And . . . As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”

revision

2008-09-14T23:56:00.000+02:00

I revised a poem I haven't touched since the sweet Joan Larkin loved it in Fall 2005. So, three years since I've done anything to it. The biggest thing was to change the name from "Prague Jewish Cemetery" to "My Kafka Pilgrimage" and then to strengthen the religious conflictions I had/have as a non-practicing Catholic on sacred Jewish ground.

I also added a few more facts, and a couple more fibs. I wanted to emphasize more the main metaphor of the land and make it touch more playful in a Kafka absurdness, but the poem is subtle - I think - in its absurdness. There's one image in the poem that makes or breaks the poem for readers, I think, and I kept that in tact (comparing a cemetery to a raw starch).

But, I am not putting the poem up, because I just sent it off to Quarterly West with a bunch of other older poems, different from what I sent already. If I get rejected by them for a third time anytime in the next two months that will be a new personal record for one place. I bet, looking at how quickly they seem to be making decisions on duotrope, that I will hear back pretty soon! Or, they will hold on to the poems just so I stop sending them stuff . . . which may seem absurd, and I intend it that way, but I was told by one of my favorite writers that they did this to a certain poet named Virgil when that writer was in grad school. No, I won't say who that writer is.

And no, they did not hold work from THE Virgil, silly audience. That Virgil is probably part of the Aegean Sea Plate by now, being crushed down farther as tectonic plates make love.

spoiler: and i ruuuuun

2008-09-13T16:43:00.000+02:00

I think Jerrell is going to win Project Runway, after viewing the 84 shot slideshow of Bryant Park up on Yahoo. I've liked Kenley, but last week she was bratty, and this after viewing the shots I'd have to say only have her outfits worked. I won't talk of the others, but they did let all of them show.

better

2008-09-13T06:04:00.000+02:00

because I turned the a/c on. what a crabby-making day. I've removed my crabby post, though I stand by its sentiments. I've removed it only because the sentiment is redundant. Though very true.

I have obsessions. One of them is Duotrope.com. Another is left sock/right sock?. Both are fun to play.

That said, my monthly submission to POETRY is waiting, as are 28 others. American Letters & Commentary, Sonora Review, Columbia (NY) and Artful Dodge have all been sent work 275 days ago or beyond. Then I sent to Gulf Coast (past their sub date?) in April, along with Boston, Indiana and Southern Indiana Reviews. The editor at Southern Indiana was nice and let me e-mail them a submission though they reserve that usually for foreign writers. I had a submission ready for postal, but their guidelines are worded awkwardly and I inquired. That was at the end of April. I used my Yahoo account, and that incurs a lot of Junk, which I always fear a return decision has/will get lost in.

My crazyhorse submission is 134-days-old now but that just means another six months before they say no! Oh, that was discouraging of me to me. But most readers know that most odds are against any of us. Bat City is at 129 days. I've sent to them once before, followed by a personal rejection and invite to send more poems in the future sub periods. So I did.

After this: A Public Space, The Adirondack Review, Copper Nickel, Boxcar Poetry Review and Burnside Review were all sent within the 100-90 day range. It was my first sub to the last two and Adirondack. A Public Space has encouraged me to submit again, but that was two or three subs ago. I really like these places. Cross your fingers for my luck. Or, for a change in my success rate.

Narrative, Barn Owl, Third Coast, AGNI, The American Poetry Journal and Ninth Letter all have been sent work from moi. Of those, all but Narrative are usual suspects for my submissions. I mean, I think I sent to Barn Owl once last year, its first year, but that means I've submitted twice to it in its two years. AGNI and Ninth Letter need to take work. Please. Please take my work. I am begging. I will trade you something AGNI, please? Ninth Letter, I've sent you the poem you liked but didn't take. I've changed its title, again, and only past-tensified the verb at line two's end! Third Coast, I love you too. I've sent you a poem you've already admired, and I sent it's brother with it.

Actually, I only submit to places I like, mostly journals really like or love. I've got work out at other places, and I like those places too, but I don't want lazy poets to mimic how I submit. Lest I be inspiration for laziness.

In counting, I believe 10 of the 29 places have sent personal rejections. That's pretty good for a young writer, right? Twelve of the 29 are new submission places for me.

I might send out soon to one of my favorite places, whose submission period opens Monday. Even if I haven't the right poems to fit the aesthetic. I'm a bad judge of that whole issue.

My work seems to be in a limbo. Not too contemporarily out there, not enough in there. Too much narrative and insular, not enough insularity. Yawn.

Time for bed. it's 1150pm Chicago time. I can't believe I am up this late. This late!

2008-09-11T23:13:00.000+02:00

wrote a draft of a non-sad poem! a childhood poem. sent it to a trusted friend. re-vised myself later that night.

bought groceries. ate breakfast from Burger King. weird mood today.

rejected by Quarterly West for second time in a week! that's not what is making me weird.

I think it is exhaustion. getting up early. realizing Christopher is an adult. though I have been taking care of myself since I was a teenager, even before that, running errands today seemed very obligated. no, not an obligation, I did mean obligated. as in, I felt obligated. what a funny word.

I want to get away from submissions. I want to just write. But I also want to get fellowships and go to writer's conferences. I should write more, submit less, and focus on polishing and layering Father Belongs to the River. I wonder if I will change the title again, before it gets published somewhere someday.

Yep. I'm sleepy. And my dog needs me. I need to take my dog for a walk.

And make dinner for wifey. And me, of course.

my heart is falling upwards

2008-09-07T17:44:00.000+02:00

it happens in the fall. I can't stand sun that much, blue skies. The blue skies of Madrid felt like the blue of a lighter. The blue of a flame. Castilians are beautiful, unfriendly people. Except at the smoothie joint. Except for the oldest. Unlike American seniors.

But I didn't post today to post on Spain. I came to say, the temperature this weekend after a drained Gustav visited town all day Thursday has been inspiring. Perhaps I love Fall so much because the chill in the air translates to the skin. Such a visceral reaction, I find, often translates to one's mental mood. By one's I mean mine. By I I often mean "other."

I'm losing myself but it's fall and I'm okay. I write so much narrative in my poetry that I'm okay with slurring my thoughts here!

I am not a school boy, but I'm in love.

someone was reading my mind while I was writing, picking up what I was laying down . . .

2008-09-04T06:06:00.000+02:00

This is why I had such a hard time being objective. This article does a good job, for me, of picking out the empty rhetoric I heard in my 10 minutes of listening to Palin's speech, and it provides facts to dispute Palin's sometimes witty speech.

I can't help but think, she had the same kind of cocky, smug look Bush always has when he thinks he said something cutting and cunning. But, with hope, people will see past the sly language and question the meaning.

soapbox derby

2008-09-04T05:06:00.000+02:00

Dear Govenor Palin,

You have sucked the blood from my carotid, after slicing it with your horrible rhetoric, of course.

I'm too tired, having sat all day in the fear of terrorists. Scratch that, I sat all day with students. But after going over the same syllabus three times, don't they look like terrorists?

I can't help but think, what is Tina Fey doing wearing a bit more make-up than usual.

I tried hard, being a liberal writer (yes, that is redundant rhetoric!), to be an objective listener. To see if you had something that could make me think, maybe I won't need to feel empty inside if Obama didn't win.

But seriously, you seemed to eat my brains out with your non-talk of American issues and your personal attacks. I'm afraid that your diluted speech will actually feel good to too many of my fellow Americans. Do people really think the only way one can "fight for their country" is to actually risk killing their life in the military? And yet, I am afraid too many people will confuse holding a gun in a foreign country and shooting at foreigners makes for a good president. I am afraid that being in a bullet-filled war, first hand, is the main qualifying factor for understanding Americans and how they want their country run.

I'm afraid that right-winged fear will cause the poor to cower at the voting booth. Will women forget that they deserve to have a choice in pregnancy? Will the poor forget that they are being forgotten, other than to serve as holders of your flown-over, waiting caskets?

I'm afraid, deeply afraid. It is not because I am liberal, because I am not. I am a conservative man. I work hard for my money. So very hard for my money. I came from poverty, worked my way through a very red university. My penis is clean if not regretful of all the women I pushed away. Not because I am that hot, Mrs. Palin, though you might think . . . but because, by nature, I am conservative. Having multiple partners just does not equal gratification, success, power or prowess, to me. The same way being prisoner for 5 and a half years in North Vietnam does not equate to an ability to run a country that's already tired of Iraq.

I'm afraid people won't see the war Obama has been fighting his entire life. A real, American war. An at-home war, where the issues are at your doorstep every day. I shutter to think that having a high IQ and having the ability to empathize with others is a bad thing. My bones nearly crumble thinking that admiring the character of your leader is a bad thing. My blood is poisoned by hope, I guess. Mrs. Palin. Mrs. Palin. Perhaps my blood is poisoned by Alaskan oil rigs, Mrs. Palin. Is that the "independent energy source" you speak of, Mrs. Palin.

Thermal hairs of seals glue with your crude. Puffins splash around in your muck. This could be the independence you want. These are just animals, I understand, Mrs. Palin. We are just animals with too much time on our digits, Mrs. Palin.

I like my penis, Mrs. Palin, and I am scared of Viagra, and I want to keep my penis for my wife, Mrs. Palin. I could never be President Mrs. Palin. I've said penis three times in the public sphere, Mrs. Palin.

My penis is energy efficient, wind generated, Mrs. Palin. I don't mean to de-mean you, Mrs. Palin. That would be mean. I just don't see what you mean when your mean about what being President means.

Mrs. Palin, does President mean general, mean captain, mean lieutenant, mean brigadier. Or does it mean President, which means America which means people, which means me and you.

I'm tired, Mrs. Palin. Forgive me. Forgive me my nature, Mrs. Palin. My head is dropping at the dark out my window, and I am giving you too much here. You can't possibly understand this, Mrs. Palin. I mean, this sleepiness, Mrs Palin, this sleepiness.

-CA

summer's out for the school year (insert rocking guitar solo)

2008-09-02T17:55:00.000+02:00

I'm excited for the first day of classes . . . tomorrow.

I'm nervous for the first day of classes.

I'm a bit too comfy going into the semester.

This scares me because comfortability seems to bite me in the ass.

At least this summer. At least on our honeymoon.

The first flights. The last flights. The one's we were comfortable with.

I pray (and I know) that things won't go so awry, because I am the pilot.

I am going to add some Clay Matthews' lines to my Ethnography syllabi. Perhaps some Matthea Harvey, too. To shake up my header a little. Bye bye, Jack Gilbert. Bye, bye, Elizabeth Bishop. I love you both. Don't sink away from me.

DNC, we're dynamite

2008-08-29T03:17:00.000+02:00

caught the end of Al Gore's DNC speech and thought it was a very articulate and convincing speech. some old guy from the NYTimes disagrees and thinks he lacked passion.

all three QBs are looking good for da Bears. Orton can thank St. Clair for his INT, at least partially. Forte is winning me over. The other Adrian Peterson looked fast and decisive in the 95-yard drive, led by him and Grossman .

Booker might be cut! With Rashied Davis, Hester, Bennett (actually had a good catch tonight!), and Brandon Lloyd looking to be ahead of him, and I'm thinking Rideau is making a strong case with his size, speed and scoring. Again, BR just scores -- even if he's doing it against the 2nd stringers, etc. And, Mark Bradley looks to be making a case.

Notice, I'm all about the offense. That's because the defense played poorly again. Urlacher, I love you, but you Got Greedy in the offseason and I hope this is not how you plan to reward fans and team with your extra 20 million extension.

2008-08-28T17:32:00.000+02:00

why do other democrat senators (mr. tn) get mad when Obama has the appeal of a rock star when the past two elections people have been trying to "Rock the Vote"?

dude, dust off your shoulder.

re, re, reading

2008-08-28T06:46:00.001+02:00

reading lots of poems lately. being blown to bits of stopped breath by a few. admiring.

chet gresham's wonderful poem.

gary mcdowell's poem. second one from this man that I wish I'd written. oddly, his sensibility reminds me much of chet's -- more than just the birds.

I could chose a supersaturated handful of Clay Matthew's poems from Superfecta. "I Pluck You Out" really affected me today, made me finish a draft of an elegy. I've said it before, but one of the best things I've gotten to do was to make sure we published one of his poems in Columbia Poetry Review. Of all the contemporary poets I've read, I'm closest to his sensibility.

Also, see last post. There's apparently more, cough, un-surprise, cough, controversy with a book contest. Read Stacey Lynn Brown's tale. Methinks there's good reason to stay reclusive!

for all poetry manuscript submitters

2008-08-27T02:38:00.000+02:00

Read this vital piece of news today. There's not a word that fits the situation!

Also, we had to get a new printer, and since both Lynn and I love to scan readings for our classes, we bought a 4-in-1. I scanned one of my April poems, the shortest I could find. It's much more secure to have the poem not be able to be copy and pasted, in case I ever put a workable, publishable poem up.