Syllabizing and Wedding Bands

So this has been a productive week for me. Unfortunately, it's not new poems (one might be finished, but it could hardly be called new as it's been in the tinkering stage for quite some time now); but, we have finally picked a wedding band. As in music, not as in leaves a tan-line on your finger. Rubberband, yes it's a cheesy name, but they actually funk out enough to satisfy me. Also, their bass player is Ben Folds brother. Shelley made me promise her that that's not the reason I picked them, and it's not, but I certainly am going to enjoy telling people that.

Also, the syllabus for the fall is done, or as done as it's going to be. I'm looking forward to the class, though I worry that I'm not giving them enough diversity, in terms of aesthetic. I really had to resist the urge to simply teach my favorite writers. But for poetry, we're reading: Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, A.R. Ammons, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, C.K. Williams, James Dickey, Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell, Sharon Olds, James Wright, Mark Strand, Louise Gluck, Robert Penn Warren, and Frank O'Hara. It's tough with only six weeks for each genre, but there were a few on this list that I simply couldn't let myself leave out (specifically Bishop, Ammons, and Wright), but hopefully the students enjoy it. For fiction it was a little bit easier, as certain stories lend themselves to certain lessons, but there are a great number of stories I'm in love with that I can't wait to teach: "A Temporary Matter" by Jhumpa Lahiri, "How Far She Went" by Mary Hood, and "The Hermit's Story" by Rick Bass. These are just a few of my favorites, along with some others I feel obligated to teach: "Things They Carried" simply because it's gorgeous, "Girl" because Jamaica Kincaid is reading at Hollins this year, and "Silver Water" because I think the class will fall in love with it and hopefully seek out more Amy Bloom.

Well Fall Submission season is almost upon us, and I think I've got my list of where I'll be sending my first round. This list is much more ambitious than last year, and I can only imagine will result in across-the-board rejections, but a 23 year-old-boy can dream. For your viewing pleasure: Iowa Review, Barrow Street, AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, Tin House, Meridian, West Branch, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Tar River Poetry. All magazines I've had the chance to get my hands on, all magazines I'd lose a fingernail to get in. Here's hoping the last two weeks of summer are productive.

August Already

Middle-schoolers don't like Tim O'Brien, I do. This was a discovery I made over the past two weeks while I was teaching at the Young Writers' Camp at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. They do, however, like poems that rhyme and stories with dogs. Rick Bass was a hit, as was Jack London; they liked the E.B. White, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Meredith poems I brought, but my oh my, they did not like the Things they Carried. I know what you're thinking...really, Luke--You brought in a gruesome story about Vietnam and taught it to sixth graders? Not quite, I picked just about the most tame passage I could find, but the sentences were incredible, the pacing, but they would just not get on board. Anyway, it's not a huge deal, I was simply a bit crestfallen as I love his prose, and was sad to see the students didn't.

I read this passage from Rilke's Letters on the last day: "A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgement of it: there is no other. Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself."

In other news, I'm still riding the Best New Poets wave, though I arrived home to six rejections (count 'em: Yale Review, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Michigan Quarterly Review, FIELD, and Southern Humanities Review) which effectively took my head out of the sky, despite kind notes from the editors at MQR and Gargoyle. Anyway, I told my friend and former professor (and poet) Kevin Boyle about the good news, and he informally invited me back to read at Elon during the spring, more news there once things become more official. It would be a tremendous honor to read at my alma mater.

Three new poems up at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature today. If you don't know the journal, keep an eye on it, they publish some great poems and each one is accompanied by a "Southern Legitimacy Statement" which trumps a Contributor's Note by a Mile.

And it's starting to smell like Soccer Practice outside...

Best New Poets

Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I'm making this post halfway through my third celebratory Bud Light in a can. And I'm alone. As sad as all of that is, earlier this evening I was thrilled to receive an email from Jeb Livingood letting me know Mark Strand selected one of my poems to appear in the 2008 edition of Best New Poets. You can see the list of the winners here. All self-promotion aside, I'm bloody pumped.

Al Green is Back

If you haven't heard it yet. Please, please, please go check out Al Green's new album "Lay It Down." It was produced by Ahmir Thompson, who you might know better as ?uestlove from the Roots. It's the old lovesick Reverend, with features from familiar voices like Corrine Bailey-Rae as well as the new generation of soul singers: Anthony Hamilton and John Legend. Regardless, it's an instant candlelight classic for me.

Now back to the shameless self-promotion, a poem of mine will be up in the new issue of storySouth, set to debut either tomorrow or sometime soon after. It's an oldie, from my junior year in undergrad, though looking back on it I can't find too much to hate (which is quite an anomaly for my old poems). Either way, I'm a huge fan of the magazine. They've featured so many of my former and current professors (from Kevin Boyle and Drew Perry to Cathy Hankla and Thorpe Moeckel), so I'm honored just to be included. Also, I've got three poems up at GHOTI magazine, a great web-zine edited by some past Hollins MFA-ers.

So I've started a new project, something which I'm excited about and gives me an outlet for these summer months, a chapbook entitled "Doc Watson's Greatest Hits." I've taken the titles of some 30 Doc Watson songs and simply seen what poems result. It's an interesting experiment, starting with a title before having written the poem. Contrary to what I expected, it's been liberating as it simultaneously dictates a starting point and allows me to toy with the expectations created by a title. It's also nice to take a break from the bigger project, the thesis, which is so centered in the first person narrative and personal experience that sometimes it's a bit daunting to immerse myself in for too long.