I miss Mayberry...

Check it out: Front Porch 8 is up and live. Great poets in this issue: Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Adam Clay, Dorianne Laux, Eric Baus. And me. Some stellar audio, reviews, interviews, etc as well.

Busy busy the past 10 days. Dante research. Finalizing a contest-ready rendition of my manuscript. Teaching. Auden duty. Been awesome but exhausting.

Playing squash again tomorrow. Loving it. Absolutely loving it. Never thought I'd like it so much.

My dad is coming into town on Saturday to spend the weekend with us. Can't wait to show Auden off, enjoy some time with my pops. I miss him.

Been thinking a lot lately about honesty in poetry. How honest should I be? I don't mean about events or narrative situation. I mean how honest should I be about my fears, my emotional landscape. Sometimes I feel like I'm giving too much of myself to the page. Then I think that it's necessary for me to do so. Yes, it's necessary. I must do it. I love doing it.

Tired. To bed.

help... looking for poems re:

Hey there, dear reader. I'm looking for Modern/Contemporary poems about sunrises. Can be directly about sunrises, metaphorically, indirectly. Could even reference a sunrise.

Any ideas?

I have, so far, only found Slyvia Plath's "Southern Sunrise."

Thanks in advance!

The Fire

As soon as the store has Auden's size back in-stock, I will definitely be buying him one of these! Sweet! I can't wait.

Close-up! Ahhhh! That damn pacifer is in the shot, but at least he was happy.

In a cute lil Adidas outfit Mommy found for him. How cute? Little work-out pants and a sweatshirt. Awww.

In our Cubs' t-shirts, ready for Game 1 against the Dodgers... too bad the Cubs blew it and got hammered in the NLDS. I'm a Cubs fan, so there's always next year. Sigh.

Currently sitting at the coffee shop drinking some tea. It's called, The Fire. Nice. Okay, to Dante and some poems.

My buddy, Bill Blagg III

I used to design illusions with this guy... and drink beer. One of my best buddies ever. He's gonna make it big... you'll see him all over the country soon enough.

from Silliman's blog

From Ron Silliman's Oct 5, 2008 blog posting:

"Issue 1 is what I would call an act of anarcho-flarf vandalism. The second pages lists the compilers as Stephen McLaughlin & Jim Carpenter, and a search of domain ownership for the web host arsonism.org at Whois.com turns up the following:

Registrant Name: Stephen McLaughlin
Registrant Street1: 409 Ash St.
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City: Delanco
Registrant State/Province: New Jersey
Registrant Postal Code:08075
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone:+1.8567641574
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email: fakesalt@comcast.net

If you are unamused, you might want to tell Steve this directly. If you’re amused, I suspect that he’d like to hear that as well.

I might note that the last time I felt ripped off by an on-line stunt, I sued – as a lead plaintiff in a class-action case brought by the National Writers Union. And while I can’t discuss the suit, as a condition of the subsequent settlement, I will note that we could have gotten a pretty good major league middle infielder for the final amount. Play with other people’s reps at your own risk."


~


Carpet-bomb email this guy until his account blows up. Call him until his cell phone melts down. [I'll be doing neither... I don't have time for this guy outside the theatre of this blog. I'm happy to make my point here, for my 10-15 readers]. I don't want to be misrepresented by this supposed "art project." If I wanted my name on a terrible poem, I'd write one myself. If I wanted to create art by using other people's names and a simple computer text-generator, I'd create a website and write the program (both of which would take no less than a couple hours tops). Stephen better have failed this project. Shit. A monkey could do it. And now the monkey-shit who did do it should be forced to take the site down. Or keep it up. Either way, his voicemail and email inbox are gonna get mighty crowded if people follow through with their threats. Me, I'm gonna watch some football, write some poems, hang-out with my son, and cook some tacos.

I'm pissed

This Issue 1 thing pisses me off. I'd like to find who's doing this and punch them in the groin. Or maybe I'll just own my faux poem, celebrate it as a step forward toward a new style... nay, I wanna punch someone's groin.

My poem is on page 1634 of 3785. It goes like this:


Anodynes changed from bark

The anodyne of the belle,

above the arctic habiliment

I trudge during summer beyond

creatures

His essence is still his essence


What the hell is that? An anodyne?

Poetry Daily

Check it out. I'm on Poetry Daily today. Thanks to New England Review and the editors at Poetry Daily!