Incendiary Lit

There are a lot of different contest that have either postmark deadlines, or online submission deadlines today, The Pinch, Prairie Schooner (book), Bellingham Review and more. Here is a link to the invaluable poet’s and writer’s submission calendar for today to get your full fix.

An M.F.A. is no joke. My living room is stacked intermittently with books of poetry, essays, and an occasional novel only stopped mid-thigh for reasons of stability. The spires aren’t coursed by water but heavily annotated papers. To find one’s place in poetry as it currently is… Hooooooooooooooooooooooooowey. So yes, I’ve been full of white-hairing stress-balls thicker than marimo colonies. But yes, yes. Poems must go on. Firestarters will begin on Monday, January 24th, and I will at least be posting more laugh of the day posts, and for your consideration poems. AWP is coming up soon and I will hopefully be connecting with more writers and people of interesting perspectives to share with the temporarily immortal infosphere we’re enjoying.

I’m a fan of cut-ups as a way to pass time. I also get distracted by cut-ups when I begin one and begin trying to bend my arbitrary rules to form a more cogent poem. Here is one such cut-up. The rules are fairly steady, only the last 1-2 words (on rare occasion a third in the case of auxiliary, and one additional possessive).

Everybody Was Innocent

The president’s
love potion:
astonishment.

To me,
postage stamp,
life was awful.

That day,
the roads
all vanished.

Of the hand:
bloody mouth.

A woman
tearing off
looked on.

Room dark,
the color
too much pink.

And after the break is the original poem. Can you guess it?

Read the rest of this entry »

Time is drawing nigh for more Incendiary Lit. Stay tuned.

Viva-gasolina! (or, Damn Some Chicken McNuggets Sound Good Right Now)

I can’t watch the burst pipe anymore. High-
definition webcam (recently spammed,
though long monitoring the dirty gey-
ser) streaming now 24-7. Hi-Def cam:
be damned. Be peed upon. Why crack that bit
of three-mile-deep terra-digestive hose?
All that dead, digested and processed shit
of dinosaurs and ferns and mosquitoes
tucked so tightly in the tummy of Earth.
Beneath gravity-susceptible rock
and water and so much sustained pressure.
The answer: we’re smartish assholes. We knocked
a new rectum mid-gut and sucked. What else?
We’re not about to walk to McDonald’s.

…

-by Zebulon Huset

I refuse to afforest the bodyguard. Shave, hew the bodyguard.

(thank you engrishfunny for your great many found poem fragments–I do hope this phrase makes it into a poem of mine someday. Its on my list.)

I was trying to think of a grabbing title, what do you think? Of course he means it, and he doesn’t mean it. Like we all do. Emotional truth right? Capsules of time and spheres of existence and…. Yeah. Anyway, I was flipping through the new New Ohio Review and saw one of Bob Hicok’s lovely long titles in the table of contents: “Having intended to merely pick on an oil company, the poem goes awry” and thought Hmm. I too feel like picking on an oil company, the Deepwater Horizon’s spill still fresh (sadly, even while writing this right here, still gushing).

Also, is it just me, or does the name Deepwater Horizon sound, at least in retrospect, like Event Horizon? About the ship attempting a form of travel (drilling) never tried before, to a place never gone before in space (the ocean) and after a mishap a dark presence is making its way toward our homes. How did we not see it coming?

Anyway, Hicok’s poem begins “Never before have I so resembled British Petroleum.” Of course, British Petroleum is the essential parent company of Transocean, operators of the Deepwater Horizon rig. Now comes the part where I say the ironic tone of the poem perhaps rings even truer in the light of the current gulf spill. The poem is anchored very well in a time not far divorced from the spill (present) with other lines referring to current events such as:

…Isn’t a corporation technically a person
and responsible? Aren’t I technically a person
and responsible?

which seems, at least to this reader, to be very much a comment on the supreme court ruling allowing corporations the rights of citizens, and therefore the right to donate to political campaigns (which gets chosen politicians, law/policy makers in a place of actually deciding law/policy, with a debt of sorts to that corporation).

Hicok critically questions his own actions, his own ineffectualness, at the same time as asking the reader to consider their own global ineffectualness without getting preachy. How? Well, because he’s a magician, mostly, but also by building a strong case of self deprecation before laying into the ubiquitous you with: “How far would you walk for bread? For the flour // to make bread?” And, as promised, the poem goes awry at the end in a very organic way. From destruction to apathy to well, what’s next? I was going to quote his line about how gently BP planned to drill for their oil, but I’ll let you discover that as it was intended, within the poem, which New Ohio Review’s graciously produced not only in their pages, but also on their website as a pdf.

Read Bob Hicok’s “Having intended to merely pick on an oil company, the poem goes awry”

MMS

please help me
regulate
the cocaine
on this toilet seat.

Love Song: I and Thou

by Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level or square:
 the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
 any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
 dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
 I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
 for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
 hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
 at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
 Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
 It held. It settled plumb.
level, solid, square and true
 for that one great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
 skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
 but I planned it I sawed it
I nailed it and I
 will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
 to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can’t do everything myself.
 I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

—

Ain’t crucifixion romantic? This was pulled from Poems Seven, New and Collected Poems by Alan Dugan. Check it out. It’s cool. Preview at google books here.

Maybe it’s because there are so many absurdities being recorded every moment, maybe it’s because I grew up watching tv, maybe it’s because I’m too affected by email-induced-ADD to sit and stare at a painting for three hours at a time, maybe it’s because of anaphora–wait. No, it’s one of the first three, but whatever, Community is hilarious. Joel McHale, longtime guru of The Soup (not Talk Soup, GAWD!) has been one of my favorite tv comedians for quite sometime (with people like John Stewart, Craig Ferguson, Stephen Colbert…) and anchors this show only ostensibly about a group of friends at a community college for various reasons, but like all sitcoms, is merely a static (ish) setting and arbitrary impetus for the ‘mismatched’ cast of characters to meet repeatedly. Yeah, it’s a formula. So is rhyme. So is using line breaks. Move along. Few shows without a static setting last very long. Remember Drive?4 freaking episodes before they got the axe, even being against the enigmatically popular Dancing with the Stars and Deal or No Deal (the two most popular shows at the time, which is a sad, sad, sad, sad statement about either the viewing public or the programing/scheduling executives.) Wait, I said move along. Anyway, Community is hilarious, I think Abed’s my favorite, but how can you pick just one flavor of peculiar? Chevy Chase pushes the Archie Bunker button quite well. Watch three episodes and some random clips here at Hulu. But first! Wait! First go

here

and read this article from The Atlantic about Community. Though aimed at non-viewers the article bears enough similes and extra-sitcomal character parallels to entertain junkies as thoroughly as a bent spoon with an Arrested Development movie teaser bubbling in it.

I think I’m watching too much news. It’s beginning to frustrate my everyday life. I think, however, if I try to release with a poem every few days about my news watching, it may ease the tension. Being a Monday, the good stuff hasn’t aired yet, so I wrote a haiku about Rachael Maddow, as, you know, Republicans see her. Well, republicans who like Richard Pryor movies. Scott Brown, here’s lookin at you.

The GOP watches MSNBC

Maddow, red-necked, sly-
worded hipster. Campaigning
Like Monty Brewster.

Well, specifically at in-jokes in Arrested Development which reference the actor in question’s previous acting experience. Confused? At one point Henry Winkler, Barry Zuckercorn, hops over a plastic inflatable shark. The Fonz has finally, once more jumped the shark. So yeah, this is an interesting and well done list from 11 Points.

A woman wanted to sell one of her knuckles….
Tell me, she said. How many carats do you think it is?
But it’s not a jewel, said the jeweler.
Nor are you, said the woman, Much less a gentleman.
If you insist, said the jeweler as he put her knuckle to his loupe. Hmmm, he said, It’s certainly not a clear stone, a lot of cracks. I hope you didn’t pay much for it.
It was a gift, mother gave it to me. What do you think it’s worth?
Not very much, said the jeweler.
Maybe the setting has some value? said the woman.
It might, said the jeweler, If it includes two tits and a cunt…
I love you, said the woman.
Let’s get married, said the jeweler.
You go too far, said the woman….

—

This is from The Rooster’s Wife. Buy it. Enjoy it.

Of course, the first rule of poem club is we do not talk about what poem club can’t do. A poem can do just about anything it wants, that’s fine, but those are exceptions to the rule, and however broad the exception hole in the rule fence, the rule is still there for a reason. Or something.

Anyway. A phrasal verb is a verb consisting of a verb and one or more adverb or prepositional particles (hands off the phrase prepositional particles. That’s mine now! For my poem!). In slightly plainer-speak: take off, put up with, go off on… a lot of times (heh), to get the phrasal verb to carry the meaning you want it to you need the preposition, or as I usually call them, nothing-words. Sure, prepositions serve their purpose, but they don’t do a lot of work. They don’t carry much meaning. They are the generic insole of your shoe–some good on long walks, but nothing like the surprising comfort of a well verbalized noun. But enough disrespect to poor prepositions (leave Between alone, leave her alone!). The point is that phrasal verb, in order to mean what they mean, require a unit of more than one word. There are plenty of arguments about poetic units out there (the syllable, the word, the line, the sentence, the foot, the calf muscle–wait) but the fact of the issue is that there is white space on the page when you use a phrasal verb. This can be a positive thing as well as something to consider possibly being a little slack, depending on the poem. It is something to consider, though. Even if you don’t agree with the following:

The family’s broken up. It’s a divorce of literical proportions. One parent is across the country and you don’t have any relatives who work at an airline company. You must divide up your verbs, I know you hate to do it, but you can’t haul all your verbs across the country with you every time you wanna see the ‘other’ parent. You know, the one who doesn’t allow cartoons and the only cookies they ever have are stale strawberry wafers.The one you don’t visit a whole lot, but, you know, they’re still yours and therefore deserve some attention. Give them your phrasal verbs. When you’re playing with your regular verbs and nouns and adjectives (don’t play with your dangling participle to much or you’ll go blind) your mind will occasionally stray to a phrasal verb way off at the other house, and you will have perspective on its function, and which toy you have still near would serve its function. Or, you can always get it overnighted to you if you feel like you’ll just throw a fit without it.

I hope this has sufficiently wasted some time. Good day.

You be the one to decide. Can you distinguish from CGI-heavy Mordor from the Lord of the Rings movies and the volcano eruption in Iceland?

A dying old man is presented with a toy coffin made of cardboard.
A cardboard coffin? sighs the old man.
It’s a funeral you for little girls who like to play pretend death with their baby dolls.
But why cardboard? he sighs.
It’s cheaper than wood, and good enough for make-believe funerals.
But what will my friends think when they see me laid out like a baby doll in a coffin
made of cardboard?
You have no friends.
Then what will the God think when I arrive in a coffin made of cardboard?
There is no God….

—-

Though it’s usually a fiction exercise about the currency of words, nouns and verbs (and adjectives, adjectives, my KINGDOM of descriptive words for a surprising verb), I decided that I’m going to work on typing up a bunch of Russell Edson poems and posting them here. If anyone has a problem with that, tell me and I’ll back down like a chicken, and instead just link googlebooks which as most of what I’m typing up already free. Edson has been called the “foremost writer of prose poetry” by someone who didn’t shout it from a small stack of pallets. I’m not going to set any timelines for these Edson poems, instead just posting them whenever, because there’s nothing like being taken by surprise by an Edson poem. Their fable qualities reflect in unexpected daily occurrences as well as the contemplative ‘greater context’ of, you know, existence.

Well, if you’re a word nerd at least. Or have a sense of humor. Here are 3 reasons.

and

and though this isn’t a Weird Al-made video, the song’s great. Some funny visuals though.

Vital Signs
Emily Van Kley

Of many hometowns, this is the bleakest: main street
gap-toothed with abandoned buildings, three restaurants,
two gas stations, hockey rink, bakery, lakeside foodstore
where there may or may not be potatoes

at the end of a dust-scarved shelf. There are those of us
who drink ourselves to death and those who take a lighter hand,
but even teenagers know better

than to believe in immortality. The evidence is everywhere:
field by the church named for Johnny Mazes whose snow machine
defected in the close woods, whose helmet split

down the middle where there was no seam. Anne Fear
whose young body pin-balled the cab of a flipped van
and who woke with a cheesecloth memory. Softball
tournament named for the beautiful Ahonen twin

whose twenty-year-old heart fell away in the shower, halved shell
on the shore of an inland sea. For the misanthrope, there are
Superior’s silt-blasted wrecks, water so cold even wood won’t rot
decently. Flooded mine buildings thrusting their acidy tongues down

and down. Too many deer make for a starving winter,
which means you clutching your rifle in thin fall snow
are an instrument of some vital love.

—-

Emily Van Kley grew up in Northern Michigan, and to be honest, I couldn’t find a whole lot more out about her. Here is a story that she had published in Boston University’s Republic of Letters, also, buy the Winter 2009 (Volume 34.2) issue of the Florida Review. It’s another enjoyable read from FR, and includes 2 more poems from Van Kley (or is it just Kley?)

A New Path Will Bring Rich Rewards

by Jynne Dilling Martin

Make no mistake about it, slime molds are
the most interesting organisms on Earth.

Chop one’s body into little orange pieces
and strew it throughout a labyrinth:

the chunks actually find one another, slither
back together, reclump and glop their way out!

Why not take a page from their book, folks?
Our homogeneity is becoming alarming:

a dutiful child with shined shoes arrives
every thirty minutes for a pianoforte lesson,

the awkward herd in the women’s room
take a simultaneous piss at intermission,

we all seem to sit on our asses, look up
at bright things exploding in the sky,

give no thought to sleeping upside-down,
to shooting ourselves in both shoulders,

or to living full-time under the sea! Christ
tried to set a creative example: he was like

hey, heres a bunch of crazy things to try,
you can even put nails through your hands

and end up totally cool in just three days.
But two millennia later, no one eventually

lives on the moon. He must be disappointed.
Without eyes, wheels, hammers, or phone lines

slime molds have transcended vastly more
challenging circumstances; if they had brainstorm

as well as a sense of humor we’d be the punchline
of every lame-ass slime mold joke. How many

humans does it take to figure out regeneration?
Dunno Bob, shall we sprout fingers and count?

—

This wonderful poem was in the TriQuarterly guest edited by David Kirby and Barbara Hamby and dubbed “Ultra-Talk”. Those familiar with people like Charles Harper Webb, Denise Duhamel, Dorianne Laux, Albert Goldbarth, Campbell McGrath et al. will definitely enjoy this issue of TriQuarterly.  Just a couple notes about this very entertaining poem which opened up the wonderful world of slime molds to me. The tone is very consistent and believable, glop (L6) is an amazing verb. The poem does bring up a good question– what next? For humans, how’re we evolving now? Not that I’m about to get into trying to answer that, it would really just devolve into a lame ass slime mold joke I’m sure.

For more poems by Jynne Dilling Martin check out this bit at Boston Review,  and these four at Perihelion. (Don’t miss “An Animal With Claws Should Use Them”.)Word.