Some

Received the new issue of Handsome a few days ago. Beautifully designed it is. A lot of good writers within the pages. Thanks again to the editors.

I now have one more poem that needs to actually be published from Ghost Lights until they're all in journals and none are forthcoming.

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I was also thrilled yesterday to get the first round of Ghost Lights galleys.

It's funny: what I never thought would be an issue is my penchant for italics and indentation.

I'm pretty sure it was Joshua Poteat who got me obsessed with how a poem can look on the page. For better or worse. And I don't know where the italics came from, but I clearly didn't realize I had that much in the book. I used it for dialogue mostly, though, and there's a lot within many of the poems. I think I just like how it looks mostly, or at least that's how the obsession started...

Thankfully I have much less italics in the new manuscript, though the crazy indentations and forms are still there. Will I ever trust myself to be strictly left-justified?

Since I start school again in exactly two weeks, I took about five hours and got about fourteen typed pages of corrections to my editor. I think I got most of it, but we'll see.

I'm doing my best to make sure everything's as perfect as can be before it goes to the printers in a few months. I suppose that kind of goes without saying.

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Steve had a very interesting post recently concerning defunct journals and Acknowledgments pages:

I was looking at the acknowledgments page of Torched Verse Ends, and by my count at least five of the journals I placed individual poems in are already defunct (Cranky, Diner, three candles, Unloved Mail Order Bride, and Unpleasant Event Schedule). Plus, the journal I edited for a good portion of time while I was producing the poems, The Eleventh Muse, is either defunct or might as well be. Beyond that, a ton of the journals that were generally prominent and well regarded when I first started trying to publish poetry are gone too: Chelsea, Grand Street, Partisan Review, Ontario Review, etc. And now many university reviews are in danger: New England Review, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, etc. Is there a lesson in that impermanence, especially considering that we're clearly publishing in the age of obsolescence for the print book? I don't know. Maybe it's just that if you're really a writer, you enjoy that publication when it happens, but then consider it over and move right on to writing your next thing. Maybe something actually deep that I haven't thought of yet. What do you think?

I looked at my Acknowledgments for Ghost Lights, and right now, it looks like the only journal that will be defunct will be Diner.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in a year. How many more will be gone? I didn't know Chelsea was done either.

That said, I've always been of the mind that says, "OK, this is published, now move on." And then there's the cool thing that happens after, when it's actually published.

The best thing about getting something published, to me, is being forced to work on something new if you want to get there again. Always a good thing.

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Really enjoyed A Serious Man, which I finally saw the other day. Bizarre, disjointed, and hilarious. See it.

28

The end of the semester, as those of you know who are in school or teach at the college level, is upon us, and the insanity, though past the start, is still in full swing. Hence the lack of updates.

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I turned 28 today.

I had a pretty amazing year.

My first book got accepted for publication by Dream Horse Press.

I got married to an amazing woman, and though I'm biased, our wedding was also amazing.

I got into four out of eight schools for my PhD before finally choosing Binghamton University and moving to Vestal, New York with Jess.

And I "finished" a second manuscript, which is now officially at a total of nine contests and open reading periods.

I'm not quite sure how all of that happened, but it did, and I'm extremely thankful.

That said, the last the thing I want to do is slow down.

My new goal is to have the second manuscript accepted for publication by the time I turn 30 in exactly two years. It's lofty, I know, but I really feel that it's in a much better position than Ghost Lights was at that point, and even if it's deemed not so, I'm going to keep sending it out.

Though I didn't get a ton of poems written during this semester, which I expected, I'm hoping to come back fiercely next semester.

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I keep thinking about the page length for single collections of poetry. Ghost Lights, in a .doc file, is exactly 51 pages of actual poetry. At one point, I probably had it up to 60, but I kept cutting, and that's one thing I made a point to do, especially with published poems.

That's how the new manuscript is, too. I think it's exactly 50 pages of poetry. I like it like this.

I probably always will.

Longer collections seem to bum me out. I always keep finding poems in collections that I would've cut. Maybe I'm too hard on those books and my own manuscripts? Not sure.

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Spent last weekend in Goshen, New York, at my Aunt Janet's for Thanksgiving. Saw a lot of relatives, drank well and ate well. Can't ask for anything more.

The weekend before Jess and I went to Baltimore. She had a suturing class she decided to take part in for her job, and since I literally hadn't been anywhere since Ithaca in three months, it was good to get out of Vestal for a bit. Had a blast. Met new people. One of the best weekends I've ever had.

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Speaking of getting away, here's an interesting blog post by Susan Rich: Artist Residencies - What You Should Know.

Residencies and colonies have always been funny things to me. I've never applied to one because I've never had the desire or need to go to one, but this seems like a good start for those who are interested.

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Hopefully Ghost Lights will be out sometime around May 2010. Once I get the galleys, which should be soon, I'm going to spend day and night looking, changing, questioning, finalizing.

I already have some folks who said they're interesting in reviewing it, and I'm in the process of setting up some readings for next year. There's still a lot I need to learn about all this promotion stuff. Thankfully I have a lot of writers I can talk to.

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There's probably more I want to write, but I can't remember anything else. Except that The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans was a great movie. Hilarious, dark, fun, and insane.

Kind of pissed The Road didn't get a wide release. Hopefully in a few weeks though. The Lovely Bones better be wide, because I'm psyched to see that too, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Oh, and it looks like the new issue of Handsome is out and shipping in December.

Look at that cover. Wow.

There's a poem in there issue from Ghost Lights, and it looks like I'm in good company, which is no surprise to me.

Ra Ra Riot

The new Ra Ra Riot record leaked, and though I always say it and never do it, I hope to actually purchase it, because it's great. The most unfortunate thing that I have to get used to is the production, as the rawness from the EP seems to be absent, and "Each Year" doesn't have the beautiful string flourishes in the end like it used to.

Also, most of the tracks from the EP are on the record, so there aren't as many new cuts as I'd hoped.

Handsome is publishing my poem later in the year (or at the beginning of next year?) of the weird elegy I wrote for John Pike, their drummer who died last summer. I still find it weird that I had to see an article about his death on Pitchfork to find out about the band, which guilted me into writing the initial draft of the poem.

It's a solid record, though. I don't know if I'd quite call them chamber punk, since they don't shy away from melody, but the strings add so much that an extra guitar couldn't.

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Season 3 of Entourage is On Demand via Comcast, and I devoured most of the season last night (and have spent much time rewatching On Demand episodes from all the seasons). I can't wait for Season 5. I suck and read some spoilers, and if they're right, it's going to be a pretty wild season.

Thank God it's returning. Can you really leave Medillin to the one-dollar purchase of Harvey, while Drama's banging some Viking Quest obsessed fan on the beach?

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Since none of my students came to visit me in my office yesterday, I spent about three hours searching for more contests to send to. I made a good dent, and there are many I was unsure of, since I didn't recognize the names of winners or published books. But the list is growing. I'm ready for the fall and winter, and I started my 2009 list of contests already too.

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I already got in touch with some folks about the first book interviews, and it seems like they're down. I hope to talk to some people on their second or third books in addition to those who have only first books. I think it'd be interesting to gain some perspective on how things have changed at least over the last few years. More on this later.