Take care of us. Please.

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I'm sick of thinking about it at this point. So it's here.

5 Old School Records I Still Love... in no particular order:

The Regrets - New Directions: Results Beat Boasts - 1997

The Regrets came out of the remains of Vitreous Humor, also a band worth checking out. When I listened to all the Crank! stuff, they were a band I was interested in because of Vitreous Humor. One of the best things about it has to be Danny Pounds vocals. I think this was before his collapsed lung, and though it's been done before and will continue to be done before, it reaches a combination between singing and talking, sometimes separate, sometimes both. The lyrics are also great, and you can tell he reads a lot. And musically, the dissonant guitar, which is usually playing bizarre chords and imbibing in scraggly left-field acrobatics, just works perfectly. The lo-fi recording fits every instrument too. This was their only record. I interviewed Danny shortly after for the now-defunct zine Rocket Fuel, and the interview used to be archived online until I think about a few weeks ago. Since then, Danny Pound has gone kind of country. But if you can track this down, try to. After nearly twelve years, it still holds up so well.

Sweep the Leg Johnny - 4.9.21.30 - 1997

Sweep the Leg Johnny is one of the bands who really got me into music during my early high school years. I had a zine (even before Pitchfork I think, if such blasphemy can be uttered) called The Cupid Kidnap, where I, you guessed it, reviewed records. I was in contact with a ton of great indie labels and got great records to review, and none of them knew I was still in high school, which was nice. Though one time I tried to interview Don Caballero at a show in Cleveland, and Damon Che was a complete dickhead. The situation was later rectified when I called Ian Williams a few months later in Chicago, for an interview that's still on a tape somewhere that didn't get transcribed.

I don't exactly remember how I heard Sweep the Leg Johnny, but I then started talking to the singer / saxophonist, Steve Sostak, who was always a super nice guy. The first time I heard this record, on a shitty cassette tape I think, I fell in love with it. The recording's great, even for a a little studio in 1997, and each member has their own strengths they wholly contribute. There are rock bands with saxophones, but it works so well here. Chris's dissonant weird-ass guitar. Matt's rolling bass lines. Scott's awesome rolls and fills and subtle technicality on the drums. Steve also is a smart guy who you can also tell reads a lot, and it seems to show with his lyrics.

Somehow I was able to convince them to come to my hometown and play a show nearby in Mercer, where I ended up getting a few bands to come. They stayed at my house, thanks to my parents being awesome, did laundry, we watched Flatliners and they told me about some of the Chicago locations. I remember I had to take a vocabulary test the next day on Fahrenheit 451. I was a sophomore in high school. All of us were so pissed because the words were ridiculous, and the student teacher who gave us the test felt really bad. We stayed up late, I had to go to school and take a test, and my mom made them pancakes in the morning before they left.

If you have any old copies of Held Like Sound, I did an interview with them and John used my pictures from said show. Was that really over ten years ago?

Six Parts Seven - Things Shaped in Passing - 2002

Still one of the most beautiful records ever made. My first real breakup was in college, and she broke up with me. I was working for our radio station as a DJ wanting to work myself up the ranks, and I remember the day this promo came in. I immediately went nuts, having loved every single note they played before this, and put it in the CD player. I still remember the feeling I got when "Where Are the Timpani Heartbeats?" played. I knew that it would be a record I would forever be indebted to.

I recently posted pictures on my Facebook page from their record release show, in which they played every note from Things Shaped in Passing. Having obsessed over the record for months, it was, probably needless to say, one of my favorite shows ever. James Haas even broke out the screwdriver for the reverbed lap steel at the end of the aforementioned first song of the record.

One show (out of maybe ten or more I attended in the last six years) I attended with my buddy Wes (we saw a few) was a semi-disaster at the

I don't know what's going on with them: if they're broken up or on hiatus or back to work, but this record will always always get spin opportunities.

Castor - Castor - 1995

If someone asked me what record I've listened to the most during my lifetime, it would probably be Castor's self-titled record. Their first. Which is now nearly fourteen years old. Which is insane. One of the odd things about this record is that it should've been an EP, and not a full length. It's around 28 minutes long I think, and that's pretty damn short. But I think of a book of poetry like this in a way: it's so short that you always want to return to it. You never skip the first section and only read two and three. You never skip the last ten pages because by then it's just too much. It's the book that's 45 pages and wins a contests that's supposed to be a minimum of 48 because it's got its own small ass-kicking embedded soul.

I had a wild idea with a friend that we were going to start a label and put out a Castor 7". I had a feeling it would've happened if the band, like every band, finally spiraled toward the inevitability of break up.

Jeff Garber is now in National Skyline, who's clearly heavily influenced by U2. Check out his stuff. It's good.

We used to talk a lot on the phone. One time he told me he cheated on his girlfriend. Then he said, "Don't tell anyone about that." And then he paused. And then he said, "Though I don't know who you'd tell there." As a Podunk Pennsylvania high schooler, he was of course right.

One thing that pisses me off is the Castor mix tape he made me, which I remember listening to one summer over a week or so when I painted our garage. Pipe dreams later were discussed: a Castor double-CD anthology. So I sent him the tape without recording the amazing Castor songs that weren't released but were on the tape. So they're gone. But God this record's great.

Mercury Program - A Data Learn the Language - 2002

Another one of my favorite instrumental records. I remember driving into Richmond for the first time listening to this. Thanks again to Pir for letting me crash on his couch.

It's another record that has so many great moments. Inter-locked melodicism abound. Tons of technicality. Yet it still remains kind-of a pop record.

I had a chance to see them at the, not-surprisingly at this point, now-defunct Nanci Raygun in Richmond. I remember I ended up getting drunk instead. And the next day I was so pissed. They're supposed to be amazing live.

Check. Out. These. Records.

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Thanks to a friend, I realized Seth "Mr. Omnipresent" Abramson has this list on his blog.

Had I not already heard from Oklahoma State, I have to admit that I'd probably be freaking out just a bit at least. But it's still this murky pool of confusion, because everyone thinks if a date had already been chalked up and it wasn't you that got the call, then you're done. Out. No call or email.

But that's definitely not the case. Many factors are involved. Money. How many students they're taking. Letting their favorite picks know first. Waitlisting. Response times varying year to year.

One thing I'm thankful for: being done with my MFA. I've said it before in previous posts, but there's so much written about it now that it's almost become the cool and popular thing to do. So many more students in MFA programs = less and less folks succeeding. It's the nature of the beast, yes, but there are going to be a lot of sad students at the end of their two or three years.

Still I have six schools to hear from, which is nice. And Oklahoma State is giving me plenty of time to let them know, which I very much appreciate for that reason.

One of the things I tried not to do was look at lists of top schools. Or should I say, "top schools." I personally think all of that talk is hilarious, and I probably always will.

I remember one fairly prominent poet talking about a fairly prominent school in California, where she attended and then dropped out. As she told me, "I already had a book, so for some reason the students were gunning for me and needlessly tearing apart my work because of that." Was I there? No. Could I see this happening? Absolutely. And why, on God's green earth, would anyone want to have that kind of community at a school? I'm not saying everyone needs to go into the woods and become nudists and worship the earth with perpetual smiles about peace and love and a warless world, but when people are dicks like that, it just makes me sad.

And I know some of that goes on at other programs. Sometimes it's probably tough to avoid. But that's exactly what I do not want in a program.

Probably about a year into my MFA, I realized I was going to have to take it upon myself to figure out where I wanted to go and what I needed to do to get there. And thankfully I can use that wherever I end up for my Ph.D, and for that I am proud and excited and thrilled.

I know it's going to be a lot of work and a rough four to five years. But I want to get another book together I can send out to contests. Or who knows: maybe two. I'd like to write stuff that challenges my core.

And all these issues with money. Does an extra [insert here] grand matter if you're still not going to bust your ass and try to always keep pushing yourself? Nope.

Anyway, I find myself wanting to stop talking about all of this and then always picking it back up. But I'll let this lie for now as I continue to wait and hopefully have a chance to weigh some options.

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On the chapbook front, I've gotten it together and I think it may be ready for editors to see.

But what's the harm in letting it sit a while with so many poems from it still out in the world?

I feel like if I'm going to spend the money to send to contests, I'd rather throw Ghost Lights out there.

But my confidence is building. Maybe this is even the possible half of a new book. Who knows?

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I started watching The Wire yesterday, and realized I probably shouldn't start.

My conscious is saying, "Spend time with the poetry books and get questions out to the first book interview poets," and I think it's right.

So The Wire will be put on hold. Sixty-minute episodes are also a haul, especially with seasons of twelve.

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And apparently the film version of The Road is finished. Finally.

Don't get excited yet, since it'll probably end up being released at the end of the year.

I hope a copy leaks soon enough somewhere online.

Burned-out and scorched apocalyptic Pennsylvania.

I can't wait.

In Glory, In Wire

I wrote my first poem today in weeks. I always tell myself, "I don't need to write," like I'm trying to prove that I'm above it or don't need it in my life, and then when I don't there's this odd malaise that sets in, and I attribute to the lack of pushing words around the page. So yes, clearly I do need to write, and I need to start sticking to the draft-a-week plan.

It's another poem for the chapbook I think.

Speaking of which, I finally say down with my friend Nick the other day (you should buy his chapbook here)—my most astute reader, who's always honest and somehow hones in perfectly on the shortcomings and loose ends in my work—to discuss the chapbook. I now have many ideas where I can take it, and I still have poems to write that need to be in there. It feels that way to me at least. There's no reason to rush it I suppose.

The project's comprised of poems that I haven't really received comments on, mainly because I haven't sent them to people until a few trustworthy folks recently, as the chapbook.

I'm hoping if this doesn't turn into something that it'll at least help with future collections and projects. Since the chapbook is kind of inherently more like a sprint, you need to be ultra-cognizant of how poems fit together, what the chapbook's doing—its "agenda" I suppose—and how it ends. Even though many say, "Put your strongest poems at the beginning," I do believe in a fitting and should-be-perfect ending, however you want to define "perfect." Maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about. I don't think I ever do.

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I hadn't looked at Ghost Lights in a while, so the other day I took a look at it and cut two poems. That makes it about 53 pages of actual poetry, and I'm really happy with that length. There were some contests in the past months that called for 60-90 pages of poetry, or at the very least 60— instead of the usual 48—so I had to sneak some more in there, and I think it seemed forced, just like it kind of had to be. Needless to say, I didn't like that.

I got a recent poem published that—if it fit anywhere—I thought would fit somewhere within Ghost Lights, as it's an elegy. That said, I couldn't find a place for it. I realized this is because the only thing I can really do now is cut poems. I don't think there's anything more I can say than what's in those pages through those poems, and the aforementioned poem seemed like an echoed amalgam of a few others already in the manuscript. And if I was writing new work to include poems, they'd be forced and wouldn't have the same kind of energy the current poems do. It's taken me about a year and a half to realize this.

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I watched Lake City the other day, mainly because it was filmed in Richmond, though really it was Glen Allen I think. I recognized one five-second shot that was clearly an establishing shot, probably not part of the previous shot, that was in Shockoe Bottom. And I tried to Google some names of places and things, and I found some locations that are in Glen Allen, about five miles away. Most of the movie takes place in an old farmhouse, and the cinematography's easily the best thing about the movie. I never knew the surrounding area here was so gorgeous. It reminded me a bit of Tim Orr's contributions to the more lyrical movies he's filmed. Overall, though, it's not something you need to rush out to see. I say this too much maybe, but it reminded me of an MFA screenplay that somehow got the funding to back it. The story was a bit too loose and tried to do too many things, but I didn't hate it by the end, which is a good thing.

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Congratulations to David Wojahn. It's more than well-deserved.

I'm fairly certain in saying that without his help and support and influence these last four years, I would be completely lost in the world of poetry.

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And some noteworthy and necessary spins for me lately:

• Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light
• Various Artists - Dark Was the Night
• Calder - Lower
• Musee Mecanique - Hold This Ghost
• Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country
• Loney Dear - Dear John
  

Sure Thing, Joe Mayo

A few days ago I decided to suck it up and spend maybe way too many hours trying to assemble a chapbook of newer poems from the last couple of months. A few have been published, and every single one of the others is currently out in the world for consideration. If I didn't like the work, I probably wouldn't be doing this. I think.

I'm not sure of the project, where it'll go, if it'll turn into anything, etc., but I wanted to keep moving. It seems like there are enough reasons not to keep writing and working on poems and projects, and so many of those I don't, thankfully, have at this juncture.

I put together a chapbook once, a few years ago, and miraculously it was somehow a finalist for Poetry West. But I'm still not sure how much one has to sustain the work, if there can be bigger gaps of logic between poems, if the dynamic is changed since it's more of a sprint than any kind of distance-running.

Like a full-length manuscript, I'm just going, and hoping for some eventual destination.

Most importantly, though, is the move on doctrine. I'm not the kind of fool or egotist who says, "I'm working on my second book." I don't have a book. A book is something tangible, and if it's a .doc file or a pile of papers most likely imminently ready for the post-reader-"no"-"way" trash, then it's a manuscript. Which is why I don't know if this chapbook project will ever turn into something. I do like the poems, though, and most of them, at least to me, seem different than what's projected throughout Ghost Lights.

But while Ghost Lights is still making the rounds, I want to make sure I'm doing something productive on my end as far as my own work is concerned. I plan to be at this for the rest of my life, and that's a lot of time for too many excuses to come up with why I shouldn't be doing any of it.

And, welcomingly (which I don't think is a word, but should be), I just got a nice note from the Samuel Morse Poetry Prize. I wasn't a finalist or anything, but apparently I made it to the round just before, even though they only announced the finalists. Again, either way, it's encouraging for all the ink and paper to still snake its way through the hands of postal workers to states and states and states.