Looks like Somebody's Got a Case of the S'postas

I'm sort of supposed to be running a half-marathon in Raleigh this weekend. I'm ready for the mileage in the sense that I shouldn't have a problem running 13.1 miles. Though, I'm exhausted. The idea of driving 3 hours two days in a row and sacrificing sleeping-in both Saturday and Sunday really pains my heart. Who knows what will happen? I do love free t-shirts.


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Wrote my first new poem in over a month yesterday. Not even sure if I like it, but I was just stoked to get something down on paper (err...on screen). More sonnets (sonnets you say?) seem to be the direction I'm headed, if only for the brevity of them. So I share my joy with you, dear reader. Hope it doesn't suck (I'm always wary of poems in which any sort of crying is mentioned...). To disappear shortly....


*plish*


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Call him Granite, Argonaut, Thievery-Slick. Tusk"

from Rhett Iseman Trull's "Naming the Baby for Mark and Terra"
(The Real Warnings, Anhinga Press, 2009)



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Caption Contest has gone live over at Avoiding the Muse! Vote!


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Oh Gawd.

Being a Menace and Drinking My Juice Box

Very happy to report that The Greensboro Review took a sonnet the other day. It's my third try with them, so I'm excited they finally took one. It was the first literary magazine I ever held in my hands, the first place I ever saw my mentor, Kevin Boyle, have a poem show up. Needless to say, I'm very stoked to be appearing in the Spring 2010 issue. Happy, too, that some of these sonnets are getting taken. Another sonnet from the same sequence will be in the Fall 2009 issue of Tar River Poetry which should be hitting the shelf soon. I saw that Third Coast has come out with their Fall 2009 issue, too, which has my poem "Remembering the Old Testament While Walking the Dog" in there. Looking forward to getting my hands on the thing.


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The first round of the Caption Contest Throwdown has gone live. You could vote for the best caption. Or you could vote for me. It appears as though the judges are not fans of my caption...


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Black and yellow lichen-spotted limestone"

from Aaron Baker's "Above Kerowagi"
(Mission Work, Houghton-Mifflin, 2008)


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Blogging While Students Take a Test

This is a new experience for me. I'm feel as though my key-strokes are exceedingly loud, disruptive even. Let's hope the kids do better on this test than their first--in which I had 5 students score below a 50. I think they're ready. We just finished a unit on Modern Africa and are gearing up to watch Hotel Rwanda (a surprisingly PG-13 movie...) to close out the first quarter.

Hard to believe we're 1/4th of the way through the school year. This comes as half-encouraging, half-overwhelming....


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Speaking of the school year, our basketball team starts out the year ranked third in the nation. Looking forward to seeing these guys play.


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Looks like I'm a finalist in the caption contest over at Avoiding the Muse. Wish I could say I'm happy just to be included, but I'll be honest: I want to win. Look at those prizes! Stay tuned for the soon-to-come picture captioning extravaganza....


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Killer first line of the moment:

"The most beautiful order is still"

from Martine Bellen's "Cucina"
(This Art: Poems About Poetry, Copper Canyon Press, 2003)


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Starting to get antsy about still lingering submissions, hoping to hear back sometime soon from those I sent last Spring. Even queried at a few places, something I've never done before (and likely won't do again). It doesn't seem to do much other than annoy the editors. Anyway, I'll post should anything happen on that front.

The Hollins Critic did take a poem the other day. It's a place where my reviews have shown up before and I'm stoked to be appearing there as a poet, especially considering the other poets who have been featured in the past 6 months (R.T. Smith, George Garrett, Charlotte Matthews, Richard Dillard, etc.). I felt a little guilty sending there as I just finished an MFA at Hollins, but I knew I'd want to show up there eventually so I figured I might as well try straight off.

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My students have never heard of Gang Starr. They immediately lost any and all street cred I thought they had.

Poems

A new-ish poem, one of two that has been written since school started. This makes me very nervous. Anyway, the writing group peeps will recognize this, and it's to disappear shortly:

*plish*

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I miss having people around who care about poetry. Maybe it's just people in general. Yeah.


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Happy where I am, but just for kicks, and very likely because of the above statement, I plan on throwing my hat in a few rings this Winter. The fellowships: Stegner, Wisconsin, Provincetown, Colgate, and the Philip Roth residency at Bucknell. And, for now, the creative writing PhDs: Florida State, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Texas Tech, Southern Miss, Illinois-Chicago, and Utah. One or two off of that last list will likely drop based on my willingness to take the GRE Subject Test (a terrible reason, I admit).

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Killer first line of the moment:

"Pretty face, pretty girl,"

from Ellen Bryant-Voigt's "Variations: Two Trees"
(Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006, W.W. Norton, 2007)

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Growing up in Ithaca, there wasn't much in the way of professional sports. But we had Cornell hockey. If you didn't know, Cornell's Lynah Rink is the equivalent of Duke's Cameron Indoor when it comes to rowdiness. What can I say, smart kids know how to coordinate clever chants. So with that in mind and college hockey getting underway...

Jolly Green Grunge

Cleaned the whole of the apartment today. We're talking kitchen countertops to toilet bowls. There were scrubbing bubbles everywhere. Mildew, soap scum, and grease stains ran in horror. I'm cleaning mainly because my Dad is visiting tomorrow to watch the foliage (pronounced foll-idge) change all sorts of freaky colors. I don't clean because I want to impress him (I do, but I could care less about my general cleanliness), but because I know he would clean if I gave him the chance. I'd much rather him hang on the couch while Boone does his worst. So I cleaned and listened to the entirety of Nirvana Unplugged (twice).

There was a stain on my oven-top shaped like Africa. I wiped it away with Mr. Clean and felt like a racist. Seriously, if any of the 50s advertising icons are members of the Klan, it's definitely Mr. Clean. Lord knows the Jolly Green Giant wasn't. You know what they say about green people...


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Had a poem, a sestina, taken to appear in the upcoming Fall issue of Waccamaw. It's a web-zine I dig, even though it's still way young. Looking forward to reading the issue when it debuts late October/early November. Do people know Waccamaw or am I a victim of my Southerly bias here? Is it piss-small?


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David Roderick has an awesome poem in the new issue of Memorious. So does Frank Giampietro. So does Jennifer Chang. You should probably just go read the dang thing.


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Killer first line of the moment:

"I want to write about God and suffering and how the trees endure what we"

from Marie Howe's "Wanting a Child"
(What the Living Do, W.W. Norton, 1998)


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Snow in the forecast for this weekend. This makes me smile, I'm eager to see the puppy tilt his head in confusion at the sky, the ground. The heater in my apartment has kicked on. I wore wool socks with dress shoes yesterday.


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Lusting After Names

Your name is better than mine: more memorable, more unique, more mellifluous.

This bothers me.

My name has been a passing concern of mine for quite some time. If you haven't noticed, I have a very boring, very Anglo-Saxon-y white guy name. Nothing against Anglo-Saxons and white guys, I happen to be happy inhabiting both of those roles, but when I see a poet name like Baron Wormser--I feel an intense jealousy. Sure, I've coveted other names: Hadley Higginson, W.D. Snodgrass, Major Jackson; but something about Baron Wormser is different. It's good to the point where I suspect foul play. Did his mother know he would write gorgeous poems about working in the woods? Did he stealthily change his name from something boring like Ron Smith? Is he a real person at all or just a name sitting on a mountain-top laughing and pointing at our inferior names?

It makes me wonder: have you ever read a poem (I'm thinking in a journal rather than a whole collection) simply because of the poet's name? I know I have--though usually it's the poem title that will draw more hits. I actually thought about going by Luke T. Johnson for awhile, that is, until I saw I'd been beaten to the punch. But enough harping, I've learned to accept my inferior name. On the plus side, it is very rarely mispronounced.

Am I alone in this? Any other names folks out there lust after?


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This headline made me laugh.


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Killer first line of the moment:

"Rabinowitz tries to crawl"

from Baron Wormser's "Calendar (1956)"
(Scattered Chapters, Sarabande Books, 2008)


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I've always been a Levi's guy, but now I know why. I'm digging the new commercial, complete with Walt Whitman's scratchy scratchy voice.

Equinox as Harbinger of Doom

No need to panic. Though my title may be hyperbolizing the situation, I do think Fall is upon us. While I'm thrilled to be wearing a fleece during my short walk from house to school-building, I'm less-than-thrilled by the mountains of work. We just finished our first interim which means grades are due, which means mountains of journals and quizzes on my coffee table. Real mountains good. Figurative mountains bad.

Fortunately, this first fall weekend brings with it my first real weekend since school started. We've had classes on Saturday morning for the past three weeks, so needless to say I'm excited about the prospect of two consecutive days sleeping past 5 a.m. (though not much later as Boone starts getting restless around 8). Parent-teacher conferences on Friday--I'm hoping these will be interesting: how much more you understand about the way a child behaves after meeting their parents.


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Lots of new string-oriented music in my life. Bought the Monsters of Folk record, after hearing all the hype--haven't yet given it the time it deserves. Also picked up the new Yonder, the new Avetts, and the Grizzly Bear CD. With road-trips in my future, I'm happy to have some new tunes. Also have a stack of music from Lisa Fay--so the road-trips are necessary to make sure I get to listen to it all.


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More rejections. Though, I did get a strange bit of inside information that has me grinning. More on that front once I get the official word. Can hardly believe how quickly some of these magazines move.

In other publication news: check out the newest RATTLE e-issue. It's humbling to see the other folks who will be included in the upcoming issue. Nice to see that helladocious cover, too. There's also an interesting first book interview in there with Bruce Cohen. Makes me that much more excited to get my hands on the damn thing.


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Killer opening line of the moment:

"A shilling life will give you all the facts:"

from W.H. Auden's "Who's Who"
(Penguin Book of the Sonnet, 2001)


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Usually spoken-word/SLAM poetry is extremely hit-or-miss for me, which is odd as I have such an interest in poetry and rap both (those 2 rap albums I recorded in undergrad serve as evidence of the latter). But I stumbled across this video and was heartened, moved even: