time warp

I just got a rejection, and it's a magazine I respect and enjoy with each new issue nonetheless, from a submission I sent on July 6, 2006. And it wasn't personalized.

That's a new record.

Going to begin my swim with Philip Larkin this evening.

Sent the newly tweaked edition of the ms to four contests yesterday. Probably 5-10 more to enter between Oct 1 and Dec 1. It's expensive. Maybe I'll see a return on my investment in a few months? What? A guy can dream.

Brian Griese will start on Sunday. Thank God. If the Bears lose to the Lions, I'll never live it down. My students are mostly Lions fans. And they know my blood runs blue and orange. Will be a rough class on Monday if the Bears don't take care of business.

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my students this semester? They are engaged, talkative, intelligent, and rampantly respectful to their classmates. Amazing group. And some talented writers, too. God I love my job. So much.

Wrote a couple poems yesterday. That hasn't happened in some time. Felt good. Hopefully this weekend will be a productive one. So much wasted time the past few weekends.

Bought a recliner for my home office. It's black. It's leather. It's damn sexy. AC helped me lug it up the stairs the other day. I love having a place to read. Already finished off two books in my new sexy chair.

M's sad lately. Being a husband is the greatest honor I've ever received, but it's also the most confusing. Learning to smile is the hardest lesson to learn in life.

Okay, time to compare tone in Frost's "Birches" and Stevens' "Sunday Morning."

motherf*cker... celery is tasteless

If they don't pull him, I won't watch another game. I can't stomach it. I can't. He sucks. I've been a Bears fan my whole life and I will NEVER give up on a season, not even for a second, but if they continue to go this path, they will not make the playoffs; hell, I think they'll be out of it before the holidays. Unreal game tonight. I mean, the Cowboys are good, don't get me wrong. But we gave them way too much ground on defense. Well, the Cowboys are good. The Bears CAN be good but aren't. There you have it.

Been reading Robert Frost this weekend. Never liked him before, but now I love him. Some of the poems are so good. I never realized how much of a lyricist he was. I always thought of him (having read only the anthologized poems) as a ho-hum guy from the east. Not so. He's full of verve and imagination. He's full of lyricism and beauty.

My first workshop with my class is tomorrow. Some good writing from them. Should be a great workshop.

Got a nice rejection from a lit mag this weekend. A nice letter saying they wanted to see more soon. I like those kinds of rejections. At least I know they read my stuff.

So looks like I'll soon be an editor for both Third Coast and New Issues Press. I'm very excited about both opportunities. I'll be working for some talented and dedicated people. Love it.

Been rereading my edits, cuts, rewrites, and reorganizations on the ms. I think it's time to cut it loose this week... at least to a couple contests. I hate the feeling I get in my stomach when I sent it out. It's like, I'm imagining anyway, letting your son or daughter go on their first date: you know nothing's probably gonna happen... but it could. Except if something happened in the ms contest, it would probably be good news whereas if something happened with the son/daughter date scenario it might be bad?.... I am off tonight. Fucking Bears ruined my weekend.

Been reading Peter Gizzi's new book. Incredible. The first poem, "A Panic that Can Still Come Upon Me" is really fantastic. I recommend it. Also been reading Dean Young's embryoyo. I don't care much for sections 1 and 3, but section 2 is stellar. The odes in particular are great. I learned some things. Nice. I sometimes find Young to be a bit too schticky, but he's good in this latest book, I think. Got a review copy of Gabriel Gudding's new book-length (and when I say book-length, I mean l o n g book length) poem, Rhode Island Notebook. Can't wait to get into it. Matthea Harvey's new book, Modern Life, should be arriving in the mail soon, thanks to a new friend. I'm to review Harvey's book for this friend's journal. Exciting. And I found out that my review of Larissa Szporluk's Embryos & Idiots will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Third Coast. I mention this, honestly, not to brag but in hopes that it'll draw, if only one, more readers to Szporluk's beautiful work.

Okay, back to Frost. Hope everyone is well. Lots of exciting posts this weekend. Can't tell you how much I enjoy reading all you po-bloggers. You keep me going.

because i must eat writing

Because I don't have enough reading to do, I've decided today that I need to visit a few poets whom have 'collecteds' (or may as well) that I haven't read anything of yet. The poets are:

Philip Larkin
Richard Wilbur
W.S. Merwin
Norman Dubie

I am also resolved to figure out Dean Young's appeal. I've never been a fan. Not to say I don't respect his work, I just don't jive with it. But someone told me recently, someone I respect a great deal, that my work reminds him of Young (this comparison had NOTHING to do with talent but merely with aesthetic). I don't see it. But I'm determined to find out if it's true. I read Skid tonight. It's okay. I'm going to read embryoyo next.

So much to do, so little time to blog about it. Though I will try to post something more this weekend, a large update of the bigger picture.

yeats schmeats

I don't like Yeats.

Does that make me a bad person? a bad poet? a bad writer?

Does that make me an ignorant person? an ignorant poet? an ignorant writer?

If so, then that's okay with me!

I do like this stanza from "Adam's Curse":

We sat grown quiet at the name of love.
We saw the last embers of daylight die
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years. (28-33)

Beautiful!

In other news: I honestly can't tell if that 'artist' (and I use that term VERY loosely) who posted the "Leave Britney alone!!!" videos on YouTube is a man or woman. That said, I am in awe and am completely flabbergasted with how FOX News has treated that person. Their hatred and their ideals are poison.

Am giving the ms a facelift. The fall contest season is nearly upon us. I hate writing checks for the contests. I like the idea that I'm supporting small presses (which I also do by buying their books... you should try it too!!). But I hate losing. It's my nature. Maybe this fall I'll get some good news. If not, then I try try again. Anyway, thanks to my buddy AC, I've been rethinking the order of the ms. Now it's 3 sections instead of 4, and each section is less thematically sound. The book has a wider arc now. And the ms is much, much more fragmentary, both in its construct and on an individual poem basis. Some poems already in the ms naturally broke into fragments upon their most recent revisions. And I've pulled 6 poems from the original ms. The weakest poems. They've been replaced by more recent fragmentary poems (that were originally a part of the new ms... but they fit better with the old ms).

I expect no one to actually understand what I just wrote there.

I'm tired.

Yeats, Denis Johnson, Melanie Rae-Thon, Jerome Stern, student stories, and Peter Gizzi yet to go tonight. Yippee.

Back in the day, I performed these tricks all the time

These are two of my favorites. Both inspired by the great Swedish sleight-of-hand master Lennart Green. No, that's not me performing, but if I knew how to turn VHS to digital video, I could show you hours and hours and hours of myself peforming and practicing magic.

Hope you like these.

fragmentitis

Can the fragments be random? Can each 'poem' be completely random in its scope and reach? If I want a poem to consist of different narrative aspects, different referential statements, different imagery pools, is that okay? Is it still a poem? How tangible, how together does a poem need to be in order to call it a poem?

These fragments I'm working on aren't necessarily straight-forward. They aren't easy to follow. They aren't in a direct order. Sometimes, I'll admit, I write them as they come and then hesitate to mess with the order of each fragment within the individual 1-2 page poem. I like their randomness, their slippery nature.

But I'm not simply throwing things together because they are hip or interesting. I'm trying to weave a narrative, weave a web of sonic pleasure....

phlegmy

Got a cold. Ugh. Pile of poo.

Julie came for a visit today. Always great to see her. Gotta love the Julie.

I officially start my PhD on Wednesday. Classes start tomorrow, but I have Tuesday's off this semester... will be nice since I teach on Mondays and Wednesdays. Will be able to lesson plan, grade, etc on Tuesdays and use the rest of the week to write, research, read, etc.

I am so scared. Nervous, anxious, concerned. I know the next four years will be great, but I'm still nervous. I'm not a scholar, so the training I receive here is crucial. Can't wait to get started.

Am working on a new manuscript. Some thoughts on my composition strategy, from Tony Hoagland:

“For the sake of fixing a usable terminology, one to put it might be this: fragment is the unit, juxtaposition is the method, collage is the result."

“The fractured poem may be relatively linear and continuous, or it may be radically disjunctive, but when transition is removed, relations become implicit, not explicit. Content may be whole or partial, or it might even be deliberately absent, to be provided by the reader."

“All poems contain some interpretive openness, but here the absence of connectives leaves much to the individual reader’s intuition. Such is one primary effect of collage and juxtaposition: less orchestration, more participation."

I'm hoping the fragmented, untitled, collage-like poems will hold together to form an associative narrative. I think it's mostly succesful in that regard so far, but I wonder about whether or not the fragments are off-putting or whether or not the poem is anything more than 'fragments.'

Leads me to a question: does a poem composed of fragments need to be anything more than a collection of fragments? Does it need a larger context, a larger goal? I want the fragments to stand alone, to create a poetic moment by themselves, but I don't want to alienate readers by allowing too many loose associations, by simply 'writing fragments that aren't contributing to a well-defined larger whole.'

I have no idea what I'm talking about...