Incendiary Lit

That’s right, Glimmer Train’s monthly contest for August is the Very Short Fiction Award, which limits the piece at 3,000 words. Maybe I’ve read too much flash fiction in the last few years, but I usually feel long winded at 3,000 words. Damn you Amy Hempel! And your wickedly expansive terseness. Anyway, Yes, there is a mere 2 days until the deadline for this contest. This is MASSIVE! It’s like the PULITZER topped with dark chocolate whipped cream (which should exist, don’t you think?)! Or, at least it is one prize of twelve this year (there is, however, one other month in which a very short fiction contest is conducted). Whichever way you choose to see it, Glimmer Train’s an amazing journal for fiction. If you haven’t seen it definitely check it out. Interesting work. Click here for more information about the contest. Or here to see upcoming month’s submission themes or restrictions, or here, because, why not link to Glimmer Train one more time?

Pertinent info: Entry Fee: $15 per story. Prize: $1,200 and 20 copies of the journal (2nd $500, 3rd $300).  Max. Word Count: 3,000. Deadline: Online submissions close midnight (pacific) September 1. So, this Sunday night by 11:59 PM on the west coast.

Another Argument About the Impossible
by Lawrence Raab

Even if we agree in principle that a poem can be
about anything, you still want to claim
it cannot include space aliens,
since by their very nature (you insist)
they are silly. And even if belief
is a subject that’s stood the test of time,
a poem about a man who believes in space aliens
will be a poem about a man who is either
silly or demented. Belief requires
a world of consequence all around it:
men, women, nature, history, and so on.
Reality, of course, is another matter, but see
what happens (you continue) when these
are put together, as in: “My work
concerns the nature of reality, belief,
and space aliens.” It would be different
if we knew they were there, but we don’t,
and a poem cannot afford to adopt
such a wait-and-see attitude toward the world
which, after all, has provided so many
more compelling subjects. No (you conclude),
not even a poem that argues against them
can survive their presence,
not even if the aliens never appear,
never do or say anything, never threaten us
with their neutron blasters, never steal our women
to populate their planet, not even if their ships
remain hidden, and we are never taken up in them
to be probed and instructed, dazzled and released.

–

from his collection The Probable World, and also collected in Visible Signs; New and Selected Poems. Buy them both for under $2 at amazon. You won’t regret it. They’re great. Very easy to read, and very entertaining.

–

Cool huh? I bet most people have something to say to the speaker about the concept of extra-terrestrial life, or you laughed and thought “yes,” *sniff from the snifter of cognac* “a poem about an alien, how wickedly absurd.” Then the cackle that can only be made with a glinting gold monocle string dangling in front of the left cheek. But, that is covered in the poem. Because although it’s a discussion about discussion about unknowable (and therefore impossible to prove or disprove) things, it leaves a back door by saying “It would be different / if we knew they were there, but we don’t,” because of course, now, the concept of at least some form of alien life in the incalculable depths of space seem all but assured. However, by including that statement, it recalls the time before modern space research when aliens were Metalunans in shiny silver suits and massive foreheads– like the speaker in the poem says “silly.” So a poem that argues for aliens, and against aliens can’t survive the reality of aliens… if they float down one day in their ship with a computerized Rosetta Stone and open the world of earth in on a galactic empire, everything will change. But this poem isn’t arguing for or against aliens. It’s arguing for the argument, and for the concept of a discussion about unknowable things.

The poem is one I’ve come to associate closely with Raab’s style. Very conversational, even including dialog, presents a question in an anecdotal fashion, and ends with a series of images. Not a bad way to lay out a poem if you ask me.

–

Writing exercises:

Write a poem that is your take on aliens. Place it in an anecdotal, or at least loosely narrative setting. Raab’s poem uses poetry to root the discussion in the real, for your poem use current events. Be it high or low culture, root this opinion about aliens in a very specific time, so that even if they do descend, this poem could possibly survive as a ‘pre-alien’ historical document. Or, at least a glimpse into a specific time with an alien tilt.

Write a poem that follows the general pattern of this poem. A narrative poem that digresses a number of times, that presents an argument, or concept that is left somewhat in the air for debate, that is very conversational in tone, and ends with an anaphoric word and series of 3-4 images.

Even though I didn’t win { } I look forward to reading the manuscript Yusef Komunyakaa chose as the student winner for the mtvU Poetry Prize, which is linked to the National Poetry Series.

All of the NPS winners this year are:

Kristin Naca of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bird Eating Bird
Chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa , to be published by HarperCollins Publishers

Sarah O’Brien of Brookfield, Ohio, catch light
Chosen by David Shapiro, to be published by Coffee House Press

To all: CONGRATS!!!

So I hope you have your Poet’s Market dog-eared, Duotrope and New Pages bookmarked, and a pantsload of postage ready. To refresh on what you really need to submit: a manilla envelope large enough to not have to fold your submission (it’s a professionalism thing, which I learned from an editor at the Iowa Review, thank you Nic, for helping a yound writer out) a standard business sized envelope (for your Self Addressed and Stamped Envelope. (That’s right, M. Doughty, join the 5% Nation of SASE), a brief cover letter that says the bare essentials of information for your submission (name, address, phone, email, like a 30 word bio, the titles of the piece(s) submitted, and you know, a little schmoozing goes a long ways. Now, don’t go overboard and gush and gush about a journal you’ve never read, but if you have read it before and can remember a piece from it, mention liking it. It’s just a little coutesy to the editors who have no clue if people are liking what they’ve chosen to include. Or, if you are familiar with an editor’s work, let them know what you liked. As a writer myself, I know the very few times I’ve ever heard about my work I’ve glowed about the compliment. It’s a rare thing to get an unsolicited compliment about your writing, and editors are people and writers too. Be kind to them. Great Writing- If you haven’t read much contemporary poetry, or fiction, try to read a copy of the journal you’re submitting to. Now, with the smaller journals especially, it can be hard to get ahold of one, and buying 20 different sample copies may be a little difficult, but at least, at least read a couple sample pieces on the journal’s website. Most have a couple posted to cut down on the inappropriate submissions. I’ve been guilty of submitting inappropriate work to journals, I think it’s part of the trial and error style of submissions that most novice writers go through before they learn the ropes from either an editor, a fellow writer, or another source (I highly recommend Poet’s Market for poets. It’s a tactile, and very helpful source that you can flip through while bored. It even lists a few writers who’ve been published there, so you can have something of a gauge even before you read it what they like, though most journals are ridiculously ecclectic. And finally, stamps. Here’s a simple guide: it is $1.17 for 3 ounces first class postage for your large manilla envelope along with a single page cover letter (for your own bennefit, don’t even come close to hitting a second page), and 6 more pieces of paper. Be it four single page pieces and one 2-pager, one six page piece, or whatever, 7 total pieces of paper. If it’s one more piece of paper you have to add an additional $.17 stamp. If you have 15 pieces, again, add another $.17 stamp, and so forth. Get these stamps from the post office, or wait in line to weight each envelop and mail them like that if you’re unsure about the postage. And never send it certified… journals don’t sign for submissions. It’s just not how they do it. Trust in the USPS, at least a little. And finally, you need some understanding of the journal publishing world. You don’t need experience, but knowledge that most journals can only (and I mean they only have the page space possible, regardless of quality) accept under 10% of the work submitted to them. So there will be a lot of rejection. Even famous writers… David Kirby’s poem “At the Grave of Harold Goldstein” was rejected on 17 separate occasions before it was finally accepted at Parnassus, and then it went on to be selected for that year’s Best American Poetry. So don’t let some rejection bother you. Maybe it had been an especially competitive month, or year even. Journals will get spikes in good submissions some years, and the bar for acceptance will be significantly higher. Sometimes you’ll have an editor in a bad mood, or if you’re lucky, a good mood. Editors are people too, and they are flawed, and subjective. Realize that, and be cool about it. I’ve probably got at least 300 rejections in my files. Maybe more. It happens. But it makes those acceptances all the sweeter. Have at it guys. Get organizing and figure out who you want to send which pieces. Huzzah!

Yes, those composition books she writes all her wonderful words in are also decorated. Here’s one that she posted on her blog A Century of Nerve.

That’s right, HBO is playing MST3K the Movie. That only leads me to believe that they’ve cleared up any rights issues with Universal over the lampooned movie This Island Earth starring Faith Domergue, who is the real young actress girlfriend of Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The movie’s a very cheesy sci-fi from 1955, and Mike, Tom Servo and Crow really lay into it with their peanut-gallery comments If you’ve never seen Mystery Science Theater 3000, watch the intro to the TV show (which began as a cable access show in good old Minnesota [YAY MINNESOTA!]) that I’ve posted at the bottom and listen to the theme song is the perfect explanation of the situation on the Sattelite of Love, with the iconic line “If you wonder how he eats and breathes, or other science facts / repeat to yourself ‘it’s just a show, I should really just relax.’”

I can pretty much quote this movie without it even playing, word for word. It’s THAT funny. When you see the movie and love it and want more, there’s always the TV show (some on DVD, some only through the intricate network of MST3K piraters who have labored in the wee hours of night for years to keep the episodes in circulation, in the good old days dubbing video cassettes lovingly taped from the weekly show, often for the cost of postage and the blank tape) and the hilarious new project of Mike Nelson’s RiffTrax, which skewers modern movies like Jurassic Park (with guest Riffer Weird Al), Casino Royale, Cloverfield, Harry Potter and more. And unlike MST3K, they’re strictly full length audio commentaries. So watch the MST3K movie on HBO (if you have digital cable, you can watch it On Demand) and then go check out RiffTrax. Here’s the pertinent MST3K intro, but also check out the earlier intro from when Joel was trapped on the Sattelite of Love and the origins of the show are revealed.

I saw this article about John Edwards and his mistress Rielle Hunter on Tyler Dilts’ blog infinite space and it’s somewhat disturbing. But not entirely unbelievable. Anyone in that much of a spotlight (like during a presidential candidacy) is going to have all their skeletons removed from their closet, cataloged and filed in the public eye. It’s just too bad he seems to have his (political) heart in the right place, and yet remain something of a personal douche.

Here is an in-depth (and interesting) article by Meghan O’Rourke from Slate.

and here is a link to the fabulous Poets.org where they have Kay Ryan reading a number of her poems (right hand side of the page) including the “Home to Roost” pre-911 poem that caused a little controversy post-9-11. Such an odd way to mark time when you consider other atrocities that (numerically, but not patriotically) far exceed the deathtoll of the attack on the twin towers. Closer to home causes caustic magnification, regardless of location or nationality. Hey, is that a poem? Haha.

And with this little section done, I just want to say, I heart Kay Ryan. Word up. Her poems (not entirely unlike Charles Simic, whom she took over the Poet Laureate position from) are small, interesting glimpses into a scene, a psyche, a world slightly askew, not quite how one normally looks at the world, and what more can you ask from a poem, really?

via collegehumor.com

Now, the sonic density and oddness of images may remind you of a certain woman in a white bonnet… Ms. Dickinson, and Kay Ryan’s reclusive life only back up the similarities. Ryan, however, is getting more recognition in her lifetime that Emily Dickinson. In fact, know it or not, she’s your current poet laureate. That’s right. So, verse yourself a little bit (hehe) on this positioned poet. She’s taken over Charles Simic’s position as of a couple weeks ago, so learn something. Here’s an interview/story from the New York Times, here’s a short thing from the New Yorker, and here’s an audio clip of her talking about writing from NPR. There, now you can feel like you’re still learning over the summer.

(Also, I hope this isn’t offensive, but doesn’t she look vaguely like a feminine Dudley Moore?)

His manuscript “Kurosawa’s Dog” beat out hundreds of others to win. Congratulations. For information on how to enter the 2009 Field Poetry Prize wait for a few months then click here.

Dennis Hinrichsen’s other books include Details from the Garden of Earthly Delights, Rain That Falls this Far and The Attractions of Heavenly Bodies. Of his most recent, Details… Yusef Komunyakaa said Hinrichsen’s work  “achieves a classical tone within an experimental shape, as the poems meander through a pulsating labyrinth of nuanced imagery.”

Field’s an example of a journal that I originally submitted to,*looks around to make sure no one overhears* without reading first. And I of course got rejected. But, undaunted, I made a wise move and entered the 2006 (or 2005, I forget which) book contest, and though the entry was completely wrong for them, I got a subscription and read the journal and saw the error of my ways. It’s a bit more edgy, experimental. Cerebral I guess is a good way to put it, but it’s not indecipherable either. So now I know that I should send the mostly poems with that cerebral slant to them, which I think most serious writers will write at least occasionally. Just something to keep in mind: read journals whenever you can before you submit your work to them.

That Will to Divest

Action creates
a taste
for itself.
Meaning: once
you’ve swept
the shelves
of spoons
and plates
you kept
for guests,
it gets harder
not to also
simplify the larder,
not to dismiss
rooms, not to divest yourself
of all the chairs
but one, not
to test what
singleness can bear,
once you’ve begun.

—

This poem doesn’t have the same density sonic singularity of many of Ryan’s other poems, but the theme is very easy to grasp, and very easy to empathize with. I, at least, take a long time to get cleaning and ‘thinning’ out my stash of crap, but when it gets started, minimalism sometimes shimmers off the seas of horded booty like old copies of Esquire or workshopped drafts of old poems. What would it be like to just rid yourself of the junk that you really don’t need? DVDs and silverware. The toaster and the fifth beach towel. How cool would it be to be able to flit around without that shackle of stuff. But, then I normally realize how awesome my stuff is. How great it is to fall asleep to MST3K yet again, or to be able to take digital photos (and don’t even think about taking photoshop from me). Ahhh… a romantic theme in a way. So, not as intense sonics, but very cool idea, right?

This poem also originally appeared in The New Yorker, and was in her book Elephant Rocks.

A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she’s
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

—

There’s a lot of compressed rhyme in there, or at least assonance: blinds/eyes/decides/likewise, stare/there/(there) and occlude/rude. Occlude is a slightly odd usage, but come on, it’s poetry, home of slightly odd word usages. This poem, however, didn’t quite do it for me, if you know what I mean. I like the bit about the cat’s second set of eyelids, and I get the comparison to the unknown duality of the future (good/bad, or polite/rude) but I think that it needed a little more. Not a lot, but something. As it is, unlike “Blandeur,” if I read it in the New Yorker without hearing about her before, this poem wouldn’t make me run out and buy her book.

Kay Ryan is kind of a black and white figure in poetry. You either love her wit and little geodes of poems, or you hate her for the silliness and almost childishness of her poems. Or something like that. To be honest, I think I was born into the first category, so I can’t exactly say what people don’t like about her for sure. I know that I’ve heard from professors and students alike that they don’t get the appeal. Thus begins this 20-day excursion into Kay Ryan’s work. The poem “Blandeur” originally appeared in The New Yorker (so perhaps jealousy is a factor in not liking Ryan’s work) and then her book Say Uncle.

Blandeur

If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth’s
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.

—

What I love about this poem isn’t necessarily the witty title (as opposed to grandeur) or the witty little rhymes, or the mention of a greater entity which might be pleased by little ol’ us, but the extended metaphor of the yin and yang. Everyone complains about the bad things that happen, but without the negative a positive isn’t really possible, only a sense of sameness, of blandeur. This is probably Ryan’s most anthologized poems.

I love Albert Goldbarth… he and David Kirby and Campbell McGrath kind of form a meandering narrative/linking-narratives prosey poem that I just eat up by the bucketful… but it can be a bit consuming to read one of these poems. Lots of tangents and returning to base can slow the read a bit, in order to be sure which narrative thread you’re actually following. But it’s worth it. Here’s Albert Goldbarth’s “Marble-Sized Song” which appeared in Poetry, and on July 21, 2008 on PoetryDaily.com.

Marble-Sized Song

Does she love you? She says yes, but really
how do you know unless you undress that easy assertion,
undoing its petals and laminae, and going in
below all trace of consciousness, into the neuroelectrical
coffer where self-understanding is storaged away,
and then lifting its uttermost molecule out, to study
in its nakedness as it spins
in a clinical light?—the way
we all, in our various individual versions
of this common human urge, go in,
and in, and in, the physicist down
to the string-vibration underlying matter, and
the Appalachia fiddler getting so
(as she puts it) “into my music,” sound becomes
a flesh for her to intimately (”in”-timately)
enter, “its thick and its sweetbreads.”
Is he cheating on you? He says no, and feigns
that he’s insulted, but for certainty
you’ll need to delicately strip the bark away
and drill, and tweeze, until you can smear a microscope slide
of the pith and can augur the chitterlings
—the way the philosopher can’t accept a surface
assumption of truth, but needs to peel back
the fatty sheen of the dermis, soak the cambium layer
into a blow-away foam, and then with pick
and lightbeam helmet, inch by inch begin
spelunking through those splayed-out caverns
under the crust, where gems of cogitation are buried
—the way the diver descends for the pearl,
the miner: in, the archaeologist: in, the therapist: down
the snakier roots of us and in, and in, the way
the lone, leg-pretzeled yogi makes
a glowing bathysphere of worldliness and sends it in,
and further in, tinier and heavier and ever in,
the way the man in the opium den is floating forever,
toward a horizon positioned in the center of the center
of his head…. If we could stand beyond the border
of our species and consider us objectively, it might seem
that our purpose in existing is to be a living agency
that balances, or maybe even slows, the universe’s
irreversible expansion out, and out … and each
of us, a contribution to that task.
My friend John’s wife received the news: a “growth,”
a “mass,” on her pituitary, marble-sized, mysterious.
And the primary-care physician said: Yes,
we must go in and in. That couldn’t be the final word!
And the second-opinion physician said: Yes,
my sweet-and-shivering-one,
my fingerprint-and-irisprint-uniqueness,
someone’s-dearest, you
who said the prayers at Juliette’s grave, who drove
all night from Switzerland with your daughter, you
on this irreplaceable day in your irreplaceable skin
in the scumbled light as it crosses the bay in Corpus Christi,
yes in the shadows, yes in the radiance,
yes we must go in and in.

Woot! It’s a simple concept. Every day they have a certain number of a single item for sale. They purchase massive quantities of that one item and that is all they sell until midnight or they run out. Every day there’s a new item, and in the comments there are always helpful comparative links to places like the manufacturer, Froogle, Buy… Though every day won’t be for you, they sell everything from vacuum cleaners to mp3 players, blenders to desktop computers. Today it is a two-pack of coffee makers (they do that a lot, but usually with something pretty cool, and for cheap. We got 2 mp3 players for $25 including shipping) and yesterday was a 12.1 megapixel point and shoot camera. There’s also a shirt.woot.com and wine.woot.com for the wine and t-shirt connoisseurs. Everyday there is some sort of a good deal. Have fun spending your hard-earned money even more easily now.

One of them is the sweet ass kick-back music of A Tribe Called Quest, Biz Markie, KRS-ONE, and my all-time favorite Wu-Tang song “Tearz”; and freakin Ben Kingsley. Slow down, Ghandi, you’re killin’ ‘em. Check out this trailer, looks like a young summer American (slightly) romantic comedrama done by Brits. Check out the trailer and decide for yourselves. If you want to learn more, click the big old promo picture.

Robert Lee Brewer’s Writer’s Digest blog Poetic Asides, which is quite the title, has an interview with Denise Low up now.

I mean, I knew that there had to be a poet laureate in Kansas, or, there most likely was one unless the position had been dissolved like New Jersey’s, but it’s just kind of odd to think of Kansas, at first, as something other than pastoral. But there’s Wichita, Kansas City, Topeka all with at least over 100,000 people… there are metropolitan areas… maybe I’m just subconsciously area-ist against those from Kansas because I don’t know anyone from there. The only people I’ve known from Kansas City were from KFC, Kansas F*$%ing City… Missouri. Hmm. Very odd.

For more great pictures and videos of people failing atthings… caatching a ball or training their dog, go to Fail Blog.

Or maybe even less, depending on your time zone. Here’s the pertinent information, and here’s a shorthand of that:

Postmark deadline: Today, July 15th 2008

Page count: 48-64

Judge: Gerald Locklin

Fee/Prize: $20 (includes a copy of the winning book)/$1000 (and 25 copies of your book)