ACM Etc.

Got my contributor copies of Another Chicago Magazine the other day. I have to say that it was worth the wait. It's honestly one of the best designed journals I've ever seen, which is surprising initially because it seems so compact, which it is, if that makes sense. There's just a lot to look at too, including the art around all the reading. And there's a lot of good stuff so far. Mira Bartok's essay kicks it off amazingly well, and I'll be looking for her work wherever I can find it now. Another reason why journals are so damn good to keep reading all the time. Looking forward to reading what else is within the pages soon.

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Right now there are only four journals who still have to publish poems from Ghost Lights (meaning the issues are still in the works for the printers), and I'm pretty sure by the fall all of the poems will be officially published and out in the world.

I'm pretty sure all the contracts were, "You retain rights after we publish the poem," but I'll probably shoot a mass email to the editors to see if I need to do anything else to have full rights to the poems. Hopefully I won't. Or should I even spend the time to go about something like this? Let me know, you folks with books...

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I've written a good amount of poems I actually like over the past few weeks, so I decided to put what I hope will be the final push for poem submissions, mostly to journals who accept over the summer. Then again, I can probably get some work to journals who have either the end of April or May 1st as their final date for considering work.

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Was said to see that Pebble Lake Review is going to go on hiatus after their next (online) issue. Amanda Auchter was the second editor to ever publish my work, and she actually solicited me, so it was a double confidence boost in that sense during my first MFA year.

Hopefully soon enough they can start it up again. There's been a lot of great work within those pages for years.

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Downloading Nancy looks like it's either going to be awful or really good, with no in between. I get a little skeptical when I see something like, "This is the most controversial movie you'll see all year." I'm really not sure how many folks can make a more violent and compelling movie than Irréversible, which deserves the tag line "controversial," but does so much more in so many ways. We'll see.