Winter Reading, Week 1

I’ve finally picked up a copy of Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town. I’m halfway through it, and already my inner cynic admires Hugo’s “written in a sense of play” style. I prefer the realistic to the snooty, the humorous to the boring, the crazy to the sane.

Which is probably why I get along so well with the text.

Though for another thing, it’s concise. If you’re looking for a detailed analysis of the poetry writing process, go somewhere else, to another town where people devote soliloquies to meter and verbs. That isn’t to say either of those elements aren’t necessary or worthy of soliloquies but just that Hugo hovers over the town rather than banging down every house’s front door and barging inside. This work is more of an attitude than a study, or maybe the study of an attitude that enables poetry to be written.

Hugo says “to write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance…when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there.” I think that sums up everything you need to know about a poet in fifty words or less.

Silence

Apparently either no one has any new writing featured anywhere or (more likely) no one is reading this blog.

In which case, I’m happy to continue my narcissistic tendencies and link to some of my own work, a few poems in the latest Arsenic Lobster.

Editor Susan Yount interprets the issue with a how-to column that presents unique opportunities for a winter writing exercise. I like how she synthesizes the journal into a conversation, using writing to interrogate writing with the goal of producing more writing.

Another highlight of the journal is this poem by Carina Gia Farrero, though I recommend reading every one and everyone.

Anyone have new work up anywhere? Or anything of a literary persuasion that's interesting? Let me know and I’ll link to it.

Thank you for sending me a random rejection letter. I like rejection. No, really. I do. It's fun. I mean it. No, you didn't hurt my feelings.

Did you ever get rejected by a journal you didn’t know you’d sent a little packet of specialness to? I did the other day, via email.

Weirder still: I scrolled down to read my original email to refresh my memory, if not my submissions records. Nothing. No e-cover letter.

Which made me wonder. Does Journal X like to send random rejection letters to people from their email list just to fuck with them? (Kinda funny.) Or am I suffering from pre-holiday amnesia? (I thought that only happened after I drank too many whiskey sours at a Christmas party and wound up sleeping on the kitchen floor with my cat, waking the next morning to find an illegible poem scribbled on my hand, and puking my guts out?)

Worst: Journal X didn’t even tell me what had been rejected. Poetry or prose? Old or new? I started inventing scenarios. I sent the submission while sleep walking. My cat took a break from tormenting the small mammal community and sent them on my behalf. The ghost of Chaucer inhabits my laptop and took initiative (but if true, sadly he isn’t writing any poems).

Please Stop Raining

I am not a morning person. Actually, I don’t even think I can be classified as a person until after lunch. But thanks to the pall of misery stuck to the sky—or, to be less Victorian, the dirty clouds—and the sun’s penchant for disappearing, rabbit-like, at 4:30 every afternoon, I decided to arrive at work an hour earlier each day.

This is the first week of implementing my very bad and very stupid and very, well, you get the point, idea. And the lapse in communication here on the blog is only a small sign of how waking at six a.m. is decimating my ability to function. The best metaphor for the state of things right now is the wet dog shit I keep stepping in—unintentionally—every night.

It appears I’m not the only one, though, considering the telegramesque stop start stop start email I just received from the most proficient writer I know.

Another good resource

Erika Dreifus keeps a handy site called The Practicing Writer. I subscribe to the free monthly e-newsletter, and it often has useful calls for manuscripts. She also keeps a blog.

Non-Shitty Poems

The new issue of sawbuck is up.

If you're looking for a place to submit poetry, editor Samuel Wharton says "here are some things i would especially like to put in future issues: more collaborations, more prose poems, more (good) formal poetry, more "experimental" poetry (whatever that means). but by all means, don't let that limit what you send!"