Fly

Now that I look back on my previous post about the tour, I realize that I probably left a lot out. But mainly that would consist of important things only to me, most of which would be fairly boring to others.

Like driving through Brooklyn and saying, "That looks exactly like the street of family in The Squid and the Whale," which is one of my favorite movies, and then realizing that though the streets all kind of look the same in that sense, one of them may have been their exact street.

Or the guy at one of the toll booths giving me 17 one-dollar bills instead of fives and tens, prompting me to tell my friend who I was talking to on the phone, "Apparently I was mistaken for Pacman Jones, because I'm gonna make shit rain."

Or the Full House trivia session at Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta with Blake Butler, who lost. I'm not sure Blake would want me to include him in this section of the post, and I'm going out on a limb by including myself, but I can answer many questions about Full House. And you probably don't want to challenge me, regardless of how embarrassing it is to say such a thing.

So there you go. Things like that. The post would've been longer and more drawn out, and I wanted to get to the heart of things. Hopefully you found it worth your time.

Also, I need to say thanks again to my beautiful and understanding wife, who let me go on the trip in the first place. Without her, I probably wouldn't even have a book out, so she does deserve more credit than I can give her.

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School's starting in less than three weeks. I'm excited to get back to it, get teaching again, read novels, write non-fiction, work on manuscripts.

Two more semesters of coursework to go.

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I was planning on going to New York City if need be to go see Enter the Void. I think it's going to be one of the best of the decade.

It's been eight years since Irreversible. That's way too long.

That said, I found out that it'll be part of On Demand IFC in Theaters, which is amazing. If I were closer to NYC, I'd go, but being able to get the HD version, though it won't be as good as the theater, will make me happy enough.

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If it wasn't enough that Enter the Void is premiering in theaters on September 24th, I also pre-ordered, as should you: The Thin Red Line Criterion Blu-ray and Bobby C. Rogers' Paper Anniversary.

Add to that list Gary L. McDowell's American Amen.

September's going to be a good month for good art.

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I love the new Ra Ra Riot record, The Orchard.

They're doing amazing things. They're a bunch of young and extremely talented kids. The strings are gorgeous. The melodies can't stay out of my head. And the production's top notch.

And finally bands are starting to realize that records in the 30-minute range are the way to go.

If only poets could get a clue about this...

What's that? Actually, no, I don't want to read your 110-page book if it's not a Selected or Collected. Sorry.

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The NFL season will soon be underway. Can't wait to see how the season plays out for the Giants. Many have them collapsing, with Coughlin getting let go after a losing season.

But I'm optimistic.

I can't wait for Sundays... bring it.

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And finally, a big congrats to Luke Johnson, whose first collection, After the Ark, will be coming out in in spring 2011 from NYQ Books.

Luke and I traded manuscripts a few months back, and I told him I gave him two years until it was contracted. I pride myself on usually being right about good collections I've read when it comes to publication and the like, but I have to say, he demolished my window into a thousand pieces.

It's a strong, strong collection, and one you should certainly pick up once it hits the shelves and the streets.

The Marble Game

I'm not going to deal with a lot of corrections here, or going back. This is a post of excitement, vicarious excitement, which usually should be the case anyway.

I found this post from almost a year ago, and if you look at the folks mentioned at the bottom, it should also get you excited. And if it doesn't, well, that's OK too I guess.

Here's the deal.

Blake Butler has signed a book deal with Harper Perennial, and Shane Jones is having his first novel made into a movie. And it's being reprinted by Penguin. Oh yeah, the dude who made things happen: Spike Jonze. Check out the link. Big things around the corner.

It would be easy to cry a river and say, "I work hard. Why not me?" And that's what annoys me about many, many folks writing poetry these days (because I can't take the term "poet" seriously, and probably never will be able to). It would've been easier to get an MBA if you wanted to rack the greenbacks.

This isn't a post bashing poets, because I myself, if you didn't know, am a writer of poetry. And I'm guilty of being frustrated by writing poetry also. See my last post. Or many of them before that. But come on, people.

Let me finish by saying that I'm thrilled for Shane and Blake (if you couldn't tell).

If you've read their blogs, you know that they're indefatigable writers. They don't fuck around. They made these things happen for themselves. And it's completely inspiring. Because people are reading, and people do care about art. We're in this horrendous economy right now, only composition jobs seem to be available for PhDs, and people are getting guns and murdering each other, so it's easy to bitch and moan and want Vinny Chase's life. Or you can work your ass off and get people to read your work. It's not "bragging." It's believing. It's about hope. It's about inspiration. Effusiveness required.

Go

Go congratulate Blake Butler, who has some amazing news.

He will soon be winning Guggenheim Fellowships and MacArthur Genius Grants.

He also works harder than any other writer I know.

Great things are on the way...

Few

Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas is now available for preorder at Amazon. If you buy any book during the rest of the year, let it be this one. And are you kidding me with the design?

I must say too that Blake's words have heavily influenced, I think, many of the words in the current poetry manuscript I'm working on. But his words are a lot better. So read them.

Also check out his blog for contests and reading tours and all other things Lynchian. Not that contests and reading tours are Lynchian.

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The new Memorious is up. It's one of my favorite online journals. Rebecca actually accepted a poem of mine a few years ago for an issue, but it was already spoken for, and I did email her to let her know, so chalk that up to an instance of lost email or what have you. That said, I will keep submitting until she takes something again, because the quality seems to get better every issue.

In particular, Adam Day's poems blew me away. How he doesn't have a book out yet is beyond me, and I imagine we'll all be hearing the good news soon if all is right with the world.

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I had this dream last night that the world was ending, which happens too often. But it was more vivid than usual this time. First I was walking through a friend's ocean side house, when the waves kept getting bigger and smashing into houses. Then lightning and rain. Then all these people I want to high school with crying hysterically. And more rain. And then a lot of running. I don't remember who was with me. Then a helicopter pilot on a loudspeaker or something from his helicopter. Then four helicopters were flung into the ground, each one exploding, and everyone running. The pilot was trying to warn us that the cars were going to start on their own and come after us, and we didn't know that until they started on their own and came after us. I remember a jeep chasing me, and suggested that if we ran into a secure, bricked building that all they could do was crash into it, since no one was driving. We never made it to the building. I realized when I woke up that no one ever dies in these dreams. I wake up before anything like that happens. Sounds and screams and waves crashing and thunder, but no blood of any kind, and no real witnessed deaths.

Fat Angel, Skinny Ghost

Arizona and Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. As long as Philly's not in it, that works for me. It should be a good one. I'm glad not in western PA right now, as I'd have to listen to all the annoying Steelers fans, many fairweather and bandwagon also. If Cleveland had as many Super Bowl rings as Pittsburgh, you can bet there'd be more Cleveland fans in the area.

At any rate, I hope Kurt Warner gets his second ring. Gotta support the NFC (as long as it's not Philly or Dallas).

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Five out of the eight schools I applied to got back to me about my applications being complete. Another needs payment, which somehow I forgot, so hopefully in a week or so I'll have confirmation that now all I have to do is wait.

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Tusculum Review updated their site, and it looks good.

You can also pre-order the new Copper Nickel #11 and Barn Owl Review #2. They're both shaping up to be great issues methinks.

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I think I'm going to gear up and edit this chapbook and wing it out there to some contests. Any suggestions for who has contests I should send to? I'm not as up to date with chapbook contests as I am with full-length manuscript contests.

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A lot of first books I'm looking forward to in 2009. I've already been bugging some poets like crazy to do interviews. I saw work over the past years in journals from all of them, and I knew the books would soon follow. And they did.

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Order Blake Butler's EVER. I just got my copy the other day, and it looks amazing. Derek White and Calamari Press did a great job. The design is really stunning. Now I just need some time to get in those pages.

Cleaning & Searching

I think about a month ago I posted something about all the journals I've collected in the last four years. Most of the room in the hall closet is taken up by those journals. And as I was going through them, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, online maybe is the way to go." Could we ever see Paris Review, Crazyhorse, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, etc. go strictly online? Both submissions and publication? I just don't have the room.

I'm going to call the local libraries and see if they'd be willing to take them to possibly sell in a book sale. They're all in mint or near-mint condition, and frankly, most I'm not going to read anymore. And I know that if I were new to the scene, with reading journals being an important first step (at least I thought it was and will always think it will be) in the possibly of ever trying to get my work out there in the few hands of folks who will actually read it, I would be picking up tons of these for a few bucks a piece or less. I don't want to see them in a landfill, but I can't justify keeping rows upon rows of journals on my bookshelves. So I hope they find good homes once I get the ball rolling.

Another scare today was almost not being able to locate my 25-page Philip Larkin A-paper that I wrote a few years ago at VCU. Most of the schools I'm applying to are asking for around a 20-page critical sample, and since my laptop all but blew up on me about a year and a half ago, the sometimes idiot I am came through: I didn't have it saved anywhere. So all I had was the original copy, and I made sure to have it with me during the movie in August 2008. Jess and I looked through boxes and boxes of papers, old rejections, old syllabi, etc. and couldn't find it.

Then I checked on the bookshelf, and low and behold, crumpled and crammed into David Perkins' ENGLISH ROMANTIC WRITERS, was my essay, and I could breathe easier again.

I did a massive 38-pager on Coleridge and Stevens about a year after the aforementioned essay was written, but it was a mess, and seriously needed to be revised. Since it's now officially November, and time's not slowing for the deadlines in a few months, it was imperative that I find the words of Mr. Larkin.

And even though I have to transcribe it again, I can improve it along the way, and my headache will not even make an appearance.

And these journals will finally get boxed up and into the hands of new aspiring writers who can hopefully find some flashes of inspiration within their pages.

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As a little addendum, I wanted to point out posts by both Blake Butler and Shane Jones about the process of finding homes for their novels. Even though I'm not shopping out a novel myself, they're extremely honest and informative, so check it out if you have any kind of interest in such a thing.

The Road

I've been listening to THE ROAD now for the last few weeks, on my IPod after I put it on there, maybe a month, and I'm still not done with it. I've read it before, and you should too if you haven't.

I was hoping sometime late November I could go to a theater and watch it. But now it's been pushed back until early 2009.

People have seen the early screenings. You can read reviews. I wish I was one of them.

I'm pretty sure the movie is going to be amazing.

It was filmed mostly in western Pennsylvania. I'm from western Pennsylvania.

The landscape is beautifully chaotic and insane. When I go back to Greenville, my hometown, there are things I'm so ineffably in love with it clearly cannot be defined by words.

But there are other times the ugly and disgusting side comes out. And all I want to do is burn it to the ground.

Love does that to you.

The side where a girl commits suicide in high school and because the town is so small you know about it. Or there's a fist fight at the guard rail near the edge of the high school and there are so many punches thrown to the head and violently landed that it makes you sick, and when the guy who gets the shit kicked out of him is throwing up, you're throwing up too.

I always got sick at those fights. That's why I can't watch boxing maybe. I can't take it. And I'm always obsessed with it.

But listening to THE ROAD, I've had a chance to take so much in, beyond the novel readings.

Every single line and word. I said it in a previous post, but this is why Blake Butler's SCORCH ATLAS will be important to me (by the way, I won't stop talking about Blake's book -- and if you're reading this, you need to get it when it comes out); it refuses to give up on the words, on the situation, on the fact that in one second a bullet can slug through your cranium.

But it's odd that I know it's ending. I know how it will end. Everything with the beach.

I am looking forward to every scene and every word. I truly think this may happen to our world.

I don't know how someone can read it and not think that. I just always wonder about the father character. Everyone says, "This book is about a father and a son. And about a father who takes care of his son."

You can place your words there, however you choose.

And I understand them.

But the reality of it is there's a desolate landscape. And there's a good chance that neither one of them make it. And around them is ash and gray and trees falling and cannibals and people who will slit your throat at the drop of a hat. Whatever the hell that means.

When this movie is actually out at the theater, a theater around here, I'll be there.

And this might be a thing might be a thing might be a thing of the past.

Scorch Atlas

I'm thankful to finally be writing this post, thankful to be telling folks who may not know about Blake Butler's SCORCH ATLAS, which is finally coming to book form via Featherproof Books in fall 2009.

I'm not sure what I read of Blake's initially that made me so interested in his work, but I was. It seemed like we were interested in the same kind of things, if not obsessing about them. So earlier in the year, I decided to contact him about trading manuscripts, mine poetry, and his a novel in short stories. He agreed pretty quickly, and it was nice to get another pair of eyes on my work just as I was excited to see his.

I remember that time I had more than a few hours between my first and my second and third classes I was teaching that semester, so I decided to dive in.

I read for a few straight hours, cover to cover, the entire .doc file of SCORCH ATLAS, and was blown away.

There are folks who say, "I couldn't stop reading!" when they talk about books, and the reason I'm so skeptical of that phrase is from my experiences: Rarely does that happen for me and to me, and so when it does, it's much more of an ordeal. It's not that I'm terribly picky, as I admire many writers, many books, by old authors and by new authors, but SCORCH ATLAS literally had me trying to blink moisture into my eyes from having to keep them open from the computer screen and the horrid fluorescent lights in my office. But I couldn't stop reading it, and didn't until the end.

We traded comments and emails back and forth, and I like to think we both helped out each other a lot with our manuscripts. Mine, though still a manuscript, is better for Blake's advice and what he saw in it, and I like to think that even though I'm not even close to thinking of myself as any kind of an editor, I was able to give him some good advice.

The stories are, for the most part, voluminously and unapologetically throat-slashing, yet there's such a poetic beauty to the language that balances out such material (I liken this kind of comparison to some of the horrific violence of Suspiria centered around the candy-colored lensing, striking some oddly corporeal balance of opposite goings-on), making many of the bleak and apocalyptic landscapes seem like there's a chance that things could get turned around, something which you never actually see coming to fruition, but with the possibilities always indefatigably looming.

The characters seem destitute in the more narrative stories with initial reads, yet there's an underlying, deeply underlying, tenderness that comes through with more reads, things that seem to subconsciously fuse together as the novel takes on new meaning as a whole with the culmination of every story until the end.

And this is a book where every sentence matters.

Yet the words don't seem interminably chiseled or forced, but necessary, necessary for communication within such landscapes, within such oddly intriguing familial relationships that sometimes both eschew and embrace the idea that something may be worth saving in the end, and if all hope seems lost, the attempts at trying never cease to obtain it.

My words are not doing justice to Blake's words, the characters' words, I know this.

But this is a book I will be proud to own, proud to be reading, proud that such risks were being taken, real risks, without giving up the literary quality and merit of such work.

In another's hands, these stories could be a mess: full of bleakness, full of the forced apocalyptic and bizarre, to get a rise out of the reader, or strictly to shock. But there's so much more in these stories, more to be discovered upon subsequent readings, and more to be discovered by the many readers it will have.

Plaxico Burress

Though I think Steve might have some anger issues, I didn't mean for anything to come to fruition in that post except for the fact that the list poem is mostly an easy excuse out of putting yourself, the human writer, behind the poem. Few writers have done that successfully in the past with the list poem. Few continue to do it now. And I'm sure anyone can throw stock things into a list, call it a poem, and get it published. You've seen many in journals if you read them. But thankfully it'll never be me.

Two recent writers I can mention are Jason Bredle and Blake Butler, who actually seem human behind their work when they're dealing with the "list poem," or a poem involving lists, or Blake's lists of 50 that he needs to get on the ball with and finish. Slice it any way you'd like.

That example by H.L. Hix really bugged me particularly because it's a bunch of stock headline tragedies, and because there are a few lines like "So many names fit" and "Every breath / matters." Seriously? Destination: Cymbal Crash City. Plus I have some pride in the fact that my first manuscript is attempting, in many poems, to actually explore tragedy, many specific and revealed, and not be comprised of stock phrases. Maybe I don't succeed and maybe people don't like them, and that's fine.

But any poem that my name would be on that could've been generated by a computer (ForGodot anyone? And I mean real poems written like that -- not the fake ForGodot poems, though many of them probably could've been real, which is an entirely different story) I never want to be a part of. If you're going to write, write with some balls, some honesty, some blood flow, and show me that a human is behind the words. Even if it's a hilarious poem, because not all honesty has to be built out of tragedy of course.

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On an entirely different note, Entourage is finally kicking ass again. Since the beginning of the season, there's been a lot of disparate story lines, a lot of them kind of uncharacteristic for where the show seemed like it was going. I won't reveal any spoilers, but I can't wait for the rest of the season.

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And in a few days another First Book Interview will be up. Received some from other poets in the last few days, and now I'm working on getting a bunch out to other poets in the next week.

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GO GIANTS