Incendiary Lit

Contest deadlines:

Poets and Writers
New Pages

Literary Magazines to browse for submissions:

Duotrope
New Pages

MFA research:

The Speakeasy forum (Poets and Writers’ website)
The MFA Blog (Tom Kealy’s)
Suburban Ecstacies (Seth Abramson’s)

Audio poetry:

Poets.org

There are tons, and tons of great online resources for writers of all kinds. You just gotta sift through a lot of “writing is emotion and therefore perfect just as it is” types of people, but there are definitely a lot of great sites out there. This post was mostly for the publishing minded, but tons of poets now have blogs, some poetic, others more like a public diary.

I gave up long ago trying to give Seth Abramson or Tom Kealey a run for their MFA web-journalistic money, and now just encourage everyone to read their blogs and the pw.org blog about MFA programs if they are feeling neurotic and tense about any unsent applications.

Bye-Bye UC Irvine. The thought of you was swell.

Now, a lot of non-writers will say that this isn’t really a big deal, or, not as big of a deal as writers tend to let writing things like this become (ie: endgame) but it kind of is when your really think about it. For one, the selectivity of programs (the top five or so are more selective than Harvard Undergraduate because of the extraordinarily small size of some programs (4-10 incoming student-poets) and the desired funding situation (tuition waiver and TA stipend/insurance– hey, I have plenty of undergrad student loans to not pay as it it) an MFA application is more like a job application, and there is in fact is one included in the process for many schools that offer Teaching Assistantships. And this is a job almost definitely out of state, away from family and friends, and one that is locked in for 2-3 years. And then there’s no guarantee where you’ll be able to find a teaching job. Who knows if you’ll be able to ever combine your desired profession and desired home may never coincide. That’s scary, damnit. Anyway you look at it. Up through undergraduate you can always depend on the lottery popping for you, or a rich estranged (or possibly unknown) uncle to crash your birthday party with his millions of dollars and a desire to help someone in the family.

For me the scariest thing is that not only is this (if you follow the metaphor) a job application for a very selective job somewhere else in the country, but you have to pay them a fair ammount of money to even look at it. They need to pay professors to read and evaluate incoming applications, so it is understandable that they should require some money for that process, but it makes it even harder for a poor college kid to apply to as many absurdly difficult schools to get into as he would like to. The online MFA pundits say your application pool should be 10-12 schools, at $50-75 an application, not counting cost of any and all college transcripts, postage for Letters of Recommendation (3 times for each letter: from you to prof, prof to you, you to school)… the cost of the applications far outweights the time put into the process which is ladeled on with glee and (perhaps) nervous anxiety.

So, yes, remember that some schools’ deadlines are fast-fast-fast approaching (Iowa and Cornell, I’m lookin’ at you) and others are just fast-fast on their way.

Alex Lemon’s poetry collections include Hallelujah Blackout (forthcoming from Milkweed Editions), Mosquito (Tin House Books 2006) and the chapbook At Last Unfolding Congo (horse less press 2007). His memoir is also forthcoming from Scribner. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including AGNI, BOMB, Denver Quarterly Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Open City, Pleiades and Tin House. His translations (with Wang Ping) of a number of contemporary Chinese poets have appeared in Tin House, Artful Dodge, New American Writing and other journals. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez, and he teaches writing at Macalester College in Minnesota. And he’s a badass. You’d better believe that.

Zebulon Huset: Do you have a favorite two-word color?
Alex Lemon: Butter-blue.

ZH: Do you have any tricks that you use when a particular word in a poem just doesn’t feel right?
AL: I open a new document, type the word, and then stare at it. If nothing happens, I stop writing and read. I like dictionaries, especially The Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

ZH: If you were stranded on a desert island what three movies (or books or CDs) would you bring (with the island’s magical cd/dvd player in mind, I guess)?
AL: It really depends on who I wake up as in the morning, so day to day, this would change. Today, let’s say I’d bring Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and this afternoon, I’d like to watch Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Tomorrow, Nina Simone, CD Wright and Herzog’s Wheel of Time. Oh yeah, and then the newest Brother Ali album, The Undisputed Truth would appear with John Hammond’s Wicked Grin and the largest dictionary in the universe.

ZH: If an actor was to play you in a movie, who would you want it to be?
AL: Jesse Sawyer asked me this question in an interview for The Mac Weekly and I think I answered Seal, but I’d like to revise my answer, and say a group-cast of Daniel Day Lewis, Forrest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley.

ZH: Do you have any tips for writers just beginning to submit their work for publication?
AL: Read the journals you want to submit to, and always think about your writing’s relationship to the many aesthetics that are out there. Don’t get demoralized if your work is rejected—there are so so many good writers and so few places to publish. Lots of good work doesn’t get accepted (for numerous reasons). It doesn’t always mean that your work is not good because an editor declines it. That idea of worth is a tricky thing for writers; but in a pure way, it would be ideal (and maybe impossible) to judge your writing by an internal barometer and not an editor’s thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

ZH: If you could only ever read the books of one author again, who would it be?
AL: Shakespeare or Funk & Wagnalls.

ZH: Do you have any guilty pleasure books/movies?
AL: I like Richard Price books a lot, but I’m not sure that counts. I watch a ton of baseball.

ZH: What was the last book (or poem) that you’ve absolutely loved?
AL: I loved the Matt Donovan poems in AGNI 67. Adam Clay’s new poems are knock-outs.

ZH: Have you found the process of writing a memoir very different from writing poetry and short fiction?
AL: Yes. It’s been very, very hard. Much more challenging than I had first thought. I had to really work at peeling the just-right amount lyrical veneer away from my early drafts of prose. My M.O. can be abstract and imagistic and lyrical and sometimes that sacrifices narrative and clarity. I’ve had to acknowledge my tendencies and learn how to work with and against them. I feel fortunate to have an amazing and helpful editor. But it’s been a harrowing and wonderful thing.

ZH: Do you have any advice for students applying to the writing MFA program at the University of Minnesota, or elsewhere?
AL: Before you apply to a MFA program make sure it’s what you really want to do. It’s a terrific thing if one takes advantage of it. Apply to the programs where you think you’ll be able to learn and read and write. There are so many variables to the MFA experience, all of which are clouded by expectations, and I was lucky. The U of MN was ideal for me.

ZH: Young-poets?
AL: I had the pleasure of reading at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival this spring, and while I was there I got to listen, and then read a lot of student work. That place is packed with wonderful poets.

A big congrats out to the wonderful Patty Seyburn for winning the 2008 Green Rose Prize issued by New Issues for a poetry manuscript by an established poet (with her book Hilarity). They should’ve picked my manuscript for the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize (for 1st book) and given Cal State Long Beach a 1-2 punch. But alas, Justin Marks’s A Million in Prizes won. Maybe California State University in Long Beach (like how I used the full name? Yeahhhhh) will get a little boost in interest because of this, as Patty teaches there with many other wonderful poets like Bill Mohr, Charles Harper Webb, Elliot Fried and Gerald Locklin.

Patty is also an editor at the always fabulous POOL: A Journal of Poetry, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. One of the best around.

OK, that’s enough butt kissing, sorry. Couldn’t help it, it’s very exciting for someone you know to win a contest.

This is from M Ramirez Talusan’s blog, it is the Statement of Purpose from the application that got him into Cornell, yup, one of the four last year. So here it is, check it out, and get cracking on those SOP’s and whittling down your writing samples. Most deadlines are right around the corner (Minnesota and Cornell especially).

I’ve been researching the theory of an MFA Statement of Purpose for awhile now, and can save everyone the time with a quick rundown. Basically, everyone says use common sense. It should be tight prose. As tight as a piece of flash fiction, include an anecdote or two, explain what you hope to get out of their MFA department (a honing of craft, if there’s a specific area you feel you’re weak in perhaps), and what you bring to the department (why they should feel deeeeeply honored that you are applying to their puny school. Maybe not quite so condescending, but you get the idea. How you can help your fellow students, and the prestige of the program with the masterpieces you write.)

Here’s an excellent essay from Vince Gotera at The University of Northern Iowa that gives some examples and tips. Check it out. Seriously. Or else. Don’t ask what. I said don’t ask. I’m leaving.

Working on figuring out the MFA programs you’ll be applying to, very very soon? There are a few things that should take a little more of your attention than others. One of them is your writing sample. Across the board on MFA selection committees the word is that hands down, a good writing sample is the number one greatest asset your application can have. Spend a lot of time on that. You want to show that you’re versatile, but not sporadic, that you know your craft, but are not limited by it (depending on the school), and that you are surprising. You want your writing sample to stand out, and what better way to stand out than to have a couple great poems that take risks that work(or in fiction, perhaps a flash fiction or a short short to prove your versatility?). Anyway, after that, the major thing that the selection committee concerns themselves with is the Statement of Purpose (or Goal statement or whatever the particular school chooses to label the said piece of writing.) This is how you introduce yourself to the committee, now that they’ve seen your writing sample, and know what you can do with words. Most applications require round a 300 word Statement of Purpose, some much more, but those are rare. What you want to avoid is blending in with the other 500 or so applications that these committees are reading, but also avoid going too far and being thought of as “too much.” In your research into the teachers you’ll be able to decide what’s too much for each school.

I read an article the other day about writing a good SOP, and it was really interesting, basically their guidelines were:

(1) passionate hook; (2) segué to your background in the field; (3) specific classes by title and professors you have had (especially if well-known in the field); (4) related extracurricular activities (especially if they hint at some personal quality you want to convey); (5) any publications or other professional accomplishments in the field (perhaps conference presentations or public readings); (6) explanations about problems in your background (if needed); and (7) why you have chosen this grad school (name one or two professors and what you know of their specific areas or some feature of the program which specifically attracts you).

If that makes sense to you, or has any relevance, you can spend the ten minutes it takes to read this wonderfully informative article by Vince Gotara from Northern Iowa University, home of the North American Review.

To set up a scholarship in perpetuity, as in, one time fee for virtually eternity of every year payouts. The Academy of American Poets works with colleges to set up writing scholarships at schools. A one time payment of just $2,500 gets a $100 scholarship/prize every year. That could fund a small college journal’s contest perhaps. With $25,000 (about) you can get $1,000. Did anyone say book contest? By arranging contests and scholarships at your school press it could do a few things. You can set up a class dedicated to the selection and production of the prize winning book, like Fresno State’s “Philip Levine Prize.” You can raise the quality of submissions to your journal, because, lets face it, we break out the bigger guns for cash. As a writer it’s great to actually get paid for your efforts in cashy money. This means a general increase in the quality of work submitted, as most contests say all work submitted will be considered for publication… See, like Admiral Akbar so cleverly observed “It’s a trap!” But it will result in more exposure to your magazine, and better quality work, making it even more of something that people are excited to be published in. Even if your magazine’s already really good, it will also bring you the satisfaction of doing your part to help young writers getting the attention they deserve. Here’s a link to more official looking information about setting up a scholarship/prize in perpetuity on The Academy of American Poets website. One that doesn’t have pictures of star wars characters on it, I guess.

Very young, the University of Baltimore’s MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts, is a unique program aimed more at the publishing side of writing than the teaching aspect most programs strive to prepare you for. There are good and bad things about this. 1) They don’t have teaching assistantships to help offset tuition, though they do help students find teaching positions after (and during) their schooling. 2) Because of the nature of the program, all classes are on nights and weekends. 3) The fine journal Passager is run by the MFA students, and gives them one of many, many opportunities to gain experience in publishing. The variety of classes are very cool. Choose from workshops in Poetry, Fiction, Literary Non Fiction, Novel, Memoir, or Screenwriting, as well as classes in Typography, Literary Publications, Creating the Journal (how to make your own literary journal) Getting Published (class about the submission process), Experimental Forms and Writing and Literature.

The tuition is relatively low, with fees it’s $4,900 for in state tuition and $7,200 for out of state for each semester at 9 units, putting the total cost of the 48 unit program $38,500 for the degree (assuming 9 units a semester until the last 3 unit semester) for out of state, and $26,250 for in-state.

Of course, cost of living must be thought about, if moving from the LA/Long Beach, here’s the info for that:

Salary in Los Angeles-Long Beach CA:
$25,000
Comparable salary in Baltimore MD:
$19,579.96

If you move from Los Angeles-Long Beach CA to Baltimore MD…

Groceries will cost: 15.819% less
Housing will cost: 40.993% less
Utilities will cost: 19.52% more
Transportation will cost: 1.732% less
Healthcare will cost: 5.585% less

And though the calculator indicates that you’ll be paying a lot less for rent, don’t expect to find a one bedroom around N. Charles St (walking distance of campus) for under $800. A studio, maybe, but the area’s one bedrooms usually run between 800-1000, but you also gotta realize, that’s pretty much downtown Baltimore, so if you don’t mind a bit of a drive, say 25 minutes or less, and you can find a place for around $600. Especially check by Montibello Lake/Park area.

You can’t think of Baltimore without thinking crab cakes, so while you’re there, definitely check out Buddy’s Elliot Street Bar and Grill, on, surprisingly, Elliot Street. Also be sure to check out an Orioles game in Camden Yards, and the Baltimore fans love their Ravens, as well as football in general, so if you don’t have class on Monday nights find a corner booth in one of the many pubs who extend their happy hours throughout the whole Monday Night Football game, and get your drink on even if you don’t watch the game. All night happy hour is always a great thing to behold.

The ivy league MFA, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. This is a highly selective program that only accepts 8 students each year, 4 in poetry, 4 in fiction, from a pool that varies from 280 to 500. The program has a rotating chair, but with Alice Fulton in that rotation, you know you’ll be safe. They do not offer non-fiction classes, though screen writing classes are available through their theater department. Each admitted student gets two faculty advisers who will help the student decide with what focus their coursework will take. Every student enrolled is offered a teaching assistantship which brings them not only experience right away, but also health insurance, full tuition waiver (and at a normal $32,800 that’s not cheap) as well as a stipend of $10,000 a term, ($3,475 in summer) and a unique plan. First Year you are just a reader for the spectacular journal Epoch then in the summer you teach your first class (that’s right, full year assistantships with stipends and everything. Fold up your aprons and toss them with the non-slip shoes into the back of your closet. No taking dinner orders for quite some time.) In your second year you have a standard teaching assistantship (most likely teaching lower level English to freshmen who are definitely more concerned with which frat’s throwing the party that night than whatever the hell iambs are, like at any other university, but hey, it’s experience in a safe environment for you). They even offer a summer assistantship after your second year, (if you want to stick around a little while, send your resume around a bit for the fall semester, or you just don’t want to look for any sort of job after finally graduating, but need to still make some money) and though it’s not guaranteed, their website indicates that they see no reason why it won’t continue. Many students stick around for a third and fourth year as lecturers, which is sweeter than a Wonka’s Scrumdiddiliumptious bar. They also offer a unique MFA/PhD joint program which drops you straight off the MFA train in PhD’sville. Very nice. For the application process (due Dec. 15) in addition to the standard 3 letters of recommendation, transcripts, writing sample (at least 6,000-12,000 words for fiction writers, or at least 10-12 poems) Statement of Purpose, you must also submit GRE scores. OK, now another thing to consider is cost of living. According to CNN’s cost of living calculator, well, you can see:

Salary in Los Angeles-Long Beach CA:
$20,000
Comparable salary in Ithaca NY:
$14,336.03

If you move from Los Angeles-Long Beach CA to Ithaca NY…

Groceries will cost: 16.466% less
Housing will cost: 56.542% less
Utilities will cost: 29.377% more
Transportation will cost: 0.259% less
Healthcare will cost: 7.95% less

Or in reverse, the money in stipends received would be equivalent $32,750 salary in LA, (and if you add in tuition, $70,550. Nice chunk of change if you look at it from the right light, which would be that there’re no loans to repay.) This is just from the LA area, so that’s the major difference in housing. From the national average except housing (20% below average) and utilities (32% above) every aspect mentioned on bestplaces.net are within 5% of the national average. A typical apartment goes for around $600 a month 1BR ($800 for a 2BR), and though the city’s relatively small (around 30,000), roughly 14,000 Cornell students funnel in during the school year, and quite a few stick around during the summer. While in town check out Madeline’s Restaurant, which won, among “Best Martini” and “Best Continental Restaurant” the coveted “Best place to pretend you’re somewhere other than Ithaca” award from the local paper. It’s at the corner of N. Tioga and State. The Chapter House Brew Pub is also a popular spot for a pint. As far as the nightlife goes, well, it’s not Duluth, MN, but it sure ain’t New York City, though NYC is only 250 miles away if you’re really jonesing for some skyscrapers. The abundance of college aged kids insures that there are plenty of bars open late, but perhaps not the diversity you would see in a larger city. But you’re there to study not party, right? In the words of Sean Daley “The nightlife ain’t all that, but that’s OK, / I don’t need to be distracted by the devil everyday.”
(more…)