Beginnings

It was weird the other day as I went to Paul Guest's blog a day earlier and saw the same comment from anonymous that he ended up commenting on himself.

The whole comment elicited a response halfway between shock and hilarity to me. I wish if people were going to masquerade as knowing something that they'd at least put their real name.

I love Paul's work. His memoir's going to be amazing too.

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Speaking of poets, I have to issue a congratulations to a friend and very talented poet who just won a book contest.

Unfortunately, I can't say anything else, since the contract stuff isn't done yet. That said, there's another reason why I'm doubly excited that this particular friend one this particular contest.

More later on this front.

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Saw The Lovely Bones recently. Despite the horrible reviews mostly, I actually liked it a lot. I knew I was going to like it a lot when the movie opened with the first track from Brian Eno's "Music for Airports," with snow swirling above a penguin trapped in a snow globe.

The music and cinematography are fantastic. Stanley Tucci deserves an Academy Award for playing George Harvey.

Also liked The Road a lot, though I'm hoping for a director's cut DVD so it's longer. They did a little too much on the cutting room floor.

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I registered for what I hope is going to be a great class next semester, and I decided to get a jump on some of the novels we'll be reading.

The first I read was A Thousand Acres, which I didn't know much about. Liked it a lot, though I'm not sure how I can respond to the King Lear aspect of it.

I wasn't sure what was going to happen at first, but the whole thing kept building and building and building, and though it was pretty depressing by the end (which I liked), I was amazed at how she was able to build the story around the families. There's a lot I have to say about it, so that'll be good for the spring.

My goal's to read all the books and reread them for the class.

Blood Meridian and Interpreter of Maladies are the ones I'm reading next.

Hoping to get them all done by the time I got back on January 26th.

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I really hope to challenge myself this semester and write stuff that isn't easy for me to write. I want to branch out and experiment, though I don't want to experiment to the point where the poems become exercises in music or form without meaning.

I need a new project for my third manuscript. Where will I find you, new project?

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Decided to sell a bunch of my DVDs.

A lot of Criterions I haven't watched, (though there are many I will be keeping that I still love) mostly because I once had a crazy idea that I'd get the whole collection. Yikes.

There are bunch of Anchor Bay flicks that are out of print that I've already made good money on. Great movies, but if I paid $10 for each and get at least $40 for each now, not to mention that there will undoubtedly be new and superior versions out in the future, then why not sell them now?

Plus, Blu Ray's becoming something I want to deal with in the future, though I can't see myself spending too much money to get superior versions of already good versions of DVDs I already own.

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Hoping to get to my movie and music lists before I go back for spring semester also...

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.

Shouldn't

I shouldn't be blogging right now, but I am. I have too much other stuff I should be doing.

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The whole Bridgeville shooting debacle is very sad and sickening and heart-dropping. I hate to say what I'm saying, but Thank God only three people died, not counting the shooter. For all the "planning" the psychopath did, it seemed like the damage could've been much worse. That still doesn't bring back the lives of the three women he shot, I realize this, which makes me feel weird, again for posting the last few sentences.

And the fact that he was blogging, or writing, or whatever you want to call it, about his upcoming shooting, is frightening in so many ways.

Yet somehow I can't stop thinking of Brad Pitt's character at the end of Se7en: "You're a movie of the week. You're a fucking t-shirt, at best." That's the case for this guy. A sad, clearly good-for-nothing "man," who, because he had no social skills or no wherewithal, decided because he could not get laid, he would shoot a bunch of women in a Latin dance class at an L.A. Fitness in a small town outside of Pittsburgh? Are you fucking serious?

I continued to be baffled why these things keep happening, and how they are allowed to happen, and unfortunately, that they will probably keep happening.

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The above makes the whole Steve Fellner / Seth Abramson debate look like the size of a grain of sand, which is one of the reasons more people should be writing their own poems instead of starting all the debates and blog posts they've written in the last few days.

Stopping psychopaths from easily obtaining guns is much more important to me than caring about what ALC is charging to read a personal statement, which is one of the reasons why I decided not to waste my time commenting substantially on the situation.

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And yes, switching gears, on a lighter note, I sent out my last batch of poems today before the move to 10 places. Oliver de la Paz sent an encouraging "Get it done now before you move" note on Facebook, and I decided to wise up, listen, and get them out.

If good things happen, awesome. If they're all rejections, at least the work, for now, is out there, along with many other submissions.

I'm officially stopping until at least halfway through September, I swear.

And that's not too far away.

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The Lovely Bones trailer is up. I found it amazing that a novel that's been so popular as of late is actually very, very good. That's what happens in the age of Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Picoult.

But it seems like it really can't miss.

Brian Eno score. Peter Jackson directed. A great supporting cast. Can it be sustained for 140 minutes? I hope so. I think so. I wish Ryan Gosling, who I think is an incredible actor, would've played the father, especially after Wahlberg's Titanic-sinking effort (can we call it that?) in The Happening, but alas.

So many good movies coming out from now until the end of the year.

Can't wait.

Too Long

It's been way too long since I read a novel, which was The Road months ago, though I read it twice.

Since Jess got The Lovely Bones from the library about two weeks ago, I figured I'd take a shot at it, and I had trouble putting it down.

Like Snow Angels and The Ice Storm, I loved the 70s aspect of everything, even though I didn't grow up in that time.

I'm more thrilled for the movie now also, especially since Peter Jackson's taking the reigns. Not sure about Mark Wahlberg, but I'm anxious to see what Jackson does with the story. Since there are so many characters that have huge stretches of what happens to their lives, it'll be hard to translate everything to film. But Jackson's imagination's either going to suffocate it or make it a movie that everyone will be talking about.

I'm hoping it can do justice to how amazing the movie versions of The Ice Storm and Snow Angels really are. I'd love to teach a class one day regarding similarly-themed novels and their translations to film. A class integrating two of my reasons for living would certainly be something to be thrilled about.

I suppose it would be smart to think about such things while I'm getting my Ph.D.

But I'll be checking out the movie when it comes out, or if luckily it leaks.

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I finally got a progressive scan DVD player, one that up-converts to 1080p, though that doesn't help me since we haven't gotten a new TV yet. But you can fit, say, a DVD rip of Seinfeld Season 8 (or any of the 9 seasons) on one DVD-R and play them directly from the .avi files.

And you can fit a bunch of movies on one DVD-R too. Which is nice for leaks and also movies like King of the Hill, which hasn't been released on Region 1 DVD yet. And what a great goddamn movie that is, by the way.

So it looks like I may be going the way of no-more-Netflix-for-me soon enough.

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I was on some MFA blog recently and they made a good point about the upcoming months, mainly that you should write your ass of now, since moving, getting used to a new city, a new schedule, new people, new grocery stores, new directions, etc. takes a while to comfortably deal with.

Since I haven't really been writing lately, partly due to my nervousness of having six more schools to hear from (since no matter what I do I can't stop thinking about it), that's decent advice.

I may have to reach deep down and try to get things on paper, or move the cursor and hit the keys, because I hate when I'm not writing and / or I don't have things out in the world for consideration.

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I've been thinking about slowing down in the upcoming months with manuscript contests. I've been spending, like many, a shitload of money on all these contests, and four finalist bids hasn't translated to much at all, though a little bit of legitimate hope is a good thing.

Unless I get it overhauled from a future professor wherever I am next year, I'm spent so much time on this thing that I can't see how it's ever going to change.

I'm talking poem beginnings to poem ends, the first line of the first poem to the last line of the last poem, how the sections move, verb choices, adjective choices, what to cut and what to leave, how many pages it should be for what I want the reader to get out of it, the new title of the manuscript.

Everything.

And this isn't some I-want-hold-on-to-this-because-I'm-lazy bullshit. I've spent many afternoons and nights reading the poems out loud, questioning every motive someone could throw at me for every choice. Though it took a lot to cut a few poems, I did for the sake of the manuscript. And I'm someone who thoroughly believes that no book of poetry, unless it's a Collected or Selected, should be a physical 100 pages long. I want this to be a gut-punch, and I think finally that's what it is.

Then I suppose I'm saying, with what I wrote above, "If I'm not going to change anything, why not keep the same agenda and send the manuscript to the contests that may be right for my manuscript and that I would love to win if it happened."

Which probably means I won't back down and I'll still be sending it out like crazy.

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The new Neko Case record is great. I've also been spending time with the new Bell Orchestre and Pan American records.

If this keeps up, since we haven't even hit March yet, 2009's shaping up for one of the best years for music in a long time.