A Few

Wanted to share this new review of Ghost Lights at Southeast Review Online by John Beardsley, whom I also need to thank profusely.

He did a great job with it, and though there haven't been a ton of reviews of the book, I've been thrilled with all of them, and this is definitely no exception.

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Also, last week I got my contributor copies of Copper Nickel, and the issue not only looks fantastic as an art object, but there's a ton of newer poets for whom I'll be on the lookout in the future, along with some friends and great poets I've been following for a while.

It's becoming one of my favorite journals in the country, and is surely worth the subscription price.

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Picking up The Tree of Life tomorrow.

Finally.

There was no stand-alone DVD released, as it should be.

Aside from the theater, it now needs to be seen on Blu-ray only.

I can't wait.

While

So at this point, I'm not updating this regularly, except for First Book Interviews, and it will most likely stay that way.

Though once in a while I'll to do an update, like this one, in the midst.

Otherwise, I have two years left, if all goes well, until I have my PhD. And the job market waits for no man.

Considering how fast the first two years went, and all the great advice I've gotten from friends, I figure I need to start getting a foothold on what to look for, how to prepare, etc. for all the paperwork and the like that will soon be occurring.

Along with that, teaching, writing, watching amazing films, preparing for and writing comprehensive exams, and trying to be a good husband, I know these two years are going to go by even faster.

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In other news worth mentioning, I think: I was thrilled that my second manuscript, Sirens and Wildfire, which has making the rounds for a little less than two years now (picking up some other finalist nods along the way, for which I'm also very thankful), was a finalist for The National Poetry Series.

I was never more shocked by a poetry-related email in my life. I can tell you that.

I wasn't one of the five chosen in the end, but friend and fellow writer (whose first manuscript, Praise Nothing, you should put on your to-buy list when it's inevitably published) Joshua Robbins was also a finalist, and considering we've seen each other's said manuscripts and have talked a lot about them regarding contests, structuring, and much more, I was happy to be in such company.

I'm still hoping to have the manuscript under contract before I'm done at Binghamton in less than two years. That news gave me a little more hope that this thing's now officially ready, and I hope someone eventually believes in it enough to take a shot at getting it into the world.

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I have a poem in the new issue of DIAGRAM. As always, it's a varied and wild issue, and one definitely worth your time.

The poem's from a new series I'm working on. I'm hoping to put together a kind of conceptual manuscript (something I'd never thought about doing until maybe a year ago) within the next year (as I have about a third of it written currently).

If it doesn't turn into anything, I'm still loving the process of writing these. And overall, that's really the most important aspect of the project right now.

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Two poetry-related making-waves discussions lately (and yes, I'm late on these) are Brett Ortler's post about BlazeVOX and all the hullabaloo about MFA Rankings.

Regarding the latter, I'm on the side of down-with-rankings, but as I've mentioned in the past on this blog: I'm so thrilled that none of this talk existed in 2002-2003, when I was beginning my process of applying to schools.

But it's going to go on no matter what. As for young writers, I just hope they had the great guidance that I did, and they're applying to programs for the right reasons.

For what it's worth, in my opinion this is one of the best posts about it: belonging to Paisley Rekdal.

And for the former, I'm glad that got out into the open. At the very least, it prompted a ton of interesting discussions about publishing, self publishing, what's to gain by getting published, what the publishers gain from publishing you, etc.

Sometimes the arguments can be misleading, but to me, once you're able to slough through everything, a lot of it's worth reading, and then you can make your own decision.

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I'm now on Twitter (very late to the party), though I don't update it as often as some, here, if you're interested: http://twitter.com/keithmontesano

Contradictory, mostly. Boring to most, probably. But alas, there I am.

It's mostly my obsession and frustration with the New York Giants (Dear Lord: Why all the injuries?) coupled with some thoughts about films I'm devouring (and I watch as many as I can between everything else, as many people know). And I'll update there with news sometimes and new First Book Interviews. But mostly I like to keep the poetry-related goings-on within the blog.

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Finally, both poetry and film-related, The Tree of Life is released on Blu-ray on October 11th.

Black out the windows. Lock the doors. And crank the speakers.

Return

Just got back last night from a week in Rome, Florence, and Venice with my wife.

We've been talking about it for a couple years.

I'm glad we finally did it. It was worth every penny.

And there are so many cities we still haven't seen in Italy, much less the rest of the world.

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Walking's the way to go. This may be obvious, but alas.

I don't know how many miles we walked, but we're starting to realize that you need to travel when you're still young, if you can.

Too many retired people on the plane. Too many that looked miserable, as if they were forced to do it because that's what you're "supposed to do" when you're retired.

I can't see my legs holding up that long. Or my mind, my body, my willingness. My tolerance.

I think we're trying to do South America next. Going to try to look, at the very least, into some travel grants.

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Already wrote one poem on the plane (one that I've been returning to, stuttering and stopping with for five years, which is unusual for me), and after the Uffizi in Florence, I have ideas for a few more.

I never tried my hand, really, at true Ekphrastic poems, as far as paintings go.

Sure, I've done a lot of film-related poems, and still am, but I think it's time to try and see what I can do with some of the paintings that I saw.

There were a few that I'm going to have to write about.

But since so many writers deal with Ekphrastic poems these days, I'm going to have to try and make them... not as expected as some we get these days. Whatever that means.

Even though it's tough after how great Steve Gehrke's Michaelangelo's Seizure is. But I suppose I can learn from it.

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One of the best things about Rome was seeing The Tree of Life in a back alley art house theater near The Spanish Steps.

Didn't make it to the Keats-Shelley House, but again, the former made up for it.

It didn't seem like anyone was going to show up, but they did. It was packed. The first theater we went to had it dubbed.

This one had it with subtitles.

I could talk about the film for a while, but I still need to see it again, and again, and again after that.

It's one of the most beautiful movies ever filmed, in my opinion, and proves that you don't need lush countries and cities, necessarily, or CGI, but one of the best directors ever to get behind a camera, and one of the best production designers out there in Jack Fisk.

Again: I need to see it again, but that was an experience I'll never forget.

And the fact that it's not playing around Binghamton makes me even happier that I took advantage, though I hope that it'll get here once it goes beyond the limited release.

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I listened to the new Bon Iver record over ten times on the trip.

Let's get this straight: I think For Emma, Forever Ago and Blood Bank are overrated.

Very overrated.

So naturally I was curious to hear the new one.

And I felt the same kind of shiver that I get not very often, from the first tracks of records that you hope keep going like that.

I hear Miracle Fortress, Owen, Mark Kozelek, Jim Guthrie, Bruce Hornsby, and a ton of others as far as influences go, but there seems to be a kind of lack of complacency this time around.

There are weird flourishes with instruments and static, the lap steel is expertly placed and used in a nearly perfectly ambient way, the vocals are, of course, layered most of the time, but there's a better sense of melody with all the instruments this time around.

In other words: it seems like he knew he could make a record like he's been making, and people would buy it and could continue to do the same.

But he decided to step it up, and thankfully we still have some indie artists that are doing that these days.

Usually, for me, this doesn't happen. I'm not a fan of someone's music, as hyped as they are, and I still can never come around.

This time, though, I have come around. And for good reason.

The new record's awesome. I imagine I'll be listening to it a lot this summer, even more.

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I'm officially halfway done with my PhD.

Field exams, language, and dissertation in the next two years.

Reading for my first field exam right now, which I'm taking in August. And I have rough outlines of what I want to do for the other two, so hopefully more work will go into that this summer.

My goal has been to start working on a third manuscript that will become my dissertation, and I feel like by the end of the summer I'll have 30-35 pages of solid work, so I think I'm on track to reach it.

And what's great is a lot of the weirder poems I've been writing have been well-received by journals, so I'm thrilled that others are liking the work too.

I think a handful of journals are opening up submission periods in a few days, so it may be time to send some more work out.

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It's been a busy May, but I also need to get back to sending out First Book Interviews.

There are a bunch of poets I'm excited about contacting, so hopefully you'll see them running every two weeks throughout the summer and through the fall, and as long as poets are willing to answer questions, I'm going to keep it up as long as I can.

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life trailer is now up. The real thing. No bootleg.

Like many others have said already, I'm in agreement: this is my most anticipated film of all time.

There are others I had anticipated for months, all within the last 29 years, but nothing comes close to this.

And in my personal life, my academic life, my thoughts related to poetry and film, I keep thinking and asking myself, "Is there any poet who can come close to the beauty and genius of Terrence Malick?"

The only logical answer I think there is: Larry Levis.

Though we'll never be able to read anything beyond Elegy, if Malick continues, it's one of those kicked around thoughts, divinely related to art, that makes me legitimately say, "Life is worth living."

Quick

A few things here before I end up waiting another month to post something...

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Thanks to Nick Ripatrazone for his review of Ghost Lights at The Quarterly Conversation. This is the first official review of Ghost Lights (with more on the way), and his words mean a lot.

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And thanks to Brian Brodeur for including me in his great series How A Poem Happens. I answer questions specifically related to "Ghost Lights."

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Currently, I'm waiting on about ten poets to get back to me as far as First Book Interviews go (meaning the interviews were sent via email within the last six months).

At this point, I don't know if any of them will get back to me, but we'll see. Some poets respond in a week. Some a few months. Some never (which is odd to me, but alas).

Mostly this is my fault, I imagine, for getting so behind in the last year.

That said, there are at least ten more books I'm planning on reading over Christmas break, and I plan on playing catch up completely over those days. Then we'll be back on the regular schedule again soon enough.

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I've had five more poems accepted from the new manuscript in the last couple of months, so that's been great. Some of them should be appearing this month.

I think there are five unpublished poems left from the new manuscript now. They're all off in the world right now. And no, it's not vastly important that every poem gets published, but since these are some of my favorites in the entire thing (it seems to always happen that those are the ones that take the longest...), and I don't have any other new ones to send out at the moment, there you have it.

I didn't necessarily overhaul the manuscript, but I did take out some older and weaker poems to add some new ones. I think I probably ended up cutting seven or eight pages and adding four or five. I think the trade-off was a good one.

Now I feel better about it as it goes to more contests and open reading periods. Fingers crossed.

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The semester is done in a few days.

Next semester will hopefully officially be my last semester of coursework in my Graduate School career.

Then it's all to field exams and the dissertation (which I hope will be a third manuscript).

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A lot of other stuff I'm forgetting.

Looks like there's a decent crop of films at Sundance this year.

There's also a bootleg trailer floating around for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. It looks, not surprisingly, like it should be a gorgeous film. It's coming out in May.

With all those First Book Interviews I'll be reading for, I'm sure I'll be watching a ton of movies too. It usually happens that way.

And the snow keeps falling...

Malick

The Thin Red Line is officially slated for a Criterion Blu-ray release. Right now it looks like mid-August will be the tentative date.

I really can't verbalize how happy this makes me. If I didn't have a Blu-ray player now, this would've been the disc to take me over the edge.

Don't forget also that The Tree of Life is in post-production...

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I'm trying to figure out the PayPal thing so I can get it going on here and possibly a future website (since it seems to be a good idea and I should have at least a little time over the summer to do it). Once I know when I'll have the books and when folks who order can expect them, I'll have all the information here. Hopefully sooner than later.

I know there may be only a handful of folks who want a copy of Ghost Lights who read this, but I want to give folks an opportunity to get it cheaper than retail with free shipping.

Any minuscule amount of money I "make" from selling books will go into buying more books. Really I just don't want to lose money on the deal, and I want to get this into as many hands as possible, especially when Kyle and I are off on our cross-country reading jaunt in July.

Isn't that what you're supposed to do with your first book?