I cried when I read that my reading group was resuming. We’ve read Dickinson and Crane, soon we’ll do Pound. They’ve already done Vallejo, though what they did with him I just can’t say. I worry I can’t do it all anymore. Each time I turn a corner on something, another rolls up, bowls me over.

When my sister started as a tenure-track professor of art she described contests she was judging, exhibits in which she was showing, shows she was curating, philosophers she was reading, and museums she was flying to, fulfilling promises she made in grant proposals and sabbatical applications. She was running ragged, but doing so in paradise. Read more »

A poet shirt: I'm supposed to wear this, right?

If I told someone I had consumption, I’d expect they’d be simultaneously puzzled and concerned. They’d be puzzled because they probably wouldn’t know what consumption is, yet the name alone would likely give them some idea that consumption, whatever it is, isn’t exactly desirable.

When on occasion I mention to people that I’m a poet, I get a similar reaction. First, there’s the look of puzzlement. Most people don’t really know what poets do, or even that there are adult poets at all. I have a sneaking suspicion that many folks equate poets and poetry with rather marginalized art forms such as miming, and God forbid, clowns. Tim Pawlenty, my state’s governor, summed this up notion when he vetoed a bill to create a Minnesota Poet Laureate.

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Steve Almond has a excellent piece over at the Rumpus that uses the current FUBAR unraveling at VQR as a springboard to investigate the relationship between editors, ambition, and angry dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts).

Here’s a highlight:

31. Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It’s our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don’t read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn’t some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. It’s hard to make this case, though, if all we do is squabble with each other and lament our obscurity.

This is the best thing I’ve read all week.

Some might call it a Dominican Series. On a recent set of flights to Tejas, I decided to read Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa. His characterization of Trujillo, Trujillo’s dictatorship, his assassins, and his successor were so complex and interesting that during the flights back, I decided to pick up Junot Díaz’ The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Díaz spared even fewer punches with the dictatorship, calling Trujillo “Truzilla,” and used such an invigorating style to discuss the diaspora, that I was hooked into a full-blown Dominican phase. I just started reading Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, though I’ve had a few moments when I’ve thought about leaving it in the park for someone else to read. The Alvarez book I’d be the least likely to recommend.
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Spoot (n.)/Spooty (adj.)/Spoothead (n.), as in “Spooty spoothead!”

Cromulent (adj.), as in “Embiggens is a perfectly cromulent word.”

Snorching (n.), as in “If he doesn’t cut it out, he’s in for a snorching.”

Splork (v.), as in “What’s all that gloop splorking out of the machine?”

Narf (?), as in “Narf!”

Spluh (n.), as in “No spluh!”

Pooperdoodle (n.), as in “Oh, Pooperdoodle!”

I say if “bling” and “jiggy” make the cut, then these should, too.

What does he mean to say?

Outside the Wells Fargo on 82nd and Foster a man in gray paces with his cardboard sign. I can’t see the words but can predict the message: “Hungry, every little bit helps,” or “Disabled Veteran,” or “Lost my job, need help,” or “Wells Fargo took my house” …. I wonder if he chose this corner for its backdrop, if he knew the irony of begging for money outside a bank. For the few seconds that I sit at the light, I think this would make an interesting photograph. As a matter of fact, I think, it may even be more interesting if it was a photograph. But why? I think it has something to do with intention, the idea that someone took the time, the initiative to capture the image. It’s the fact that we get to slow it down and keep it in our minds longer, maybe. The framing of an event like this using technology, whether it be a camera or a pen and a piece of paper (or a blog, for that matter), gives it gravitas. Someone wanted people to see this, you think; it must matter. Like the time, over twenty years ago, when a friend of my mom’s found a piece of folded up paper on the street. It could have been trash, probably would have been ignored by most people, but she picked it up, unfolded it, read it and gave it to my mother. It started like this: “Journel [sic] Rick Gordon, age 34 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 9-7-85 The month is September and Oklahoma is hot as Texas. I’ve been free for about three months now….” The entry, on three sheets of yellow, lined, 5×7″ paper, was brief and personal, written by a man who said he was a fugitive and talked about paying his own rent for a week for the first time in three years, of being clean finally and proud. It ended with a list of questions about whether or not he’s up to the challenge of being free and trying to make it on his own, whether he even wanted to stay alive. And inside the folded pages lay a business card for a pawn shop covered in Rick Gordon’s cursive lists and calculations. Ever since his words ended up in my possession, I’ve wondered about his intentions for that piece of paper. Why did he need to write his thoughts down? Did it make the experience of surviving more real for him? Did he hope that someday, maybe after his death, that someone else would read his journal? I can’t say, but there’s something to this whole idea of intentionality, the idea that someone was behind a thing (a piece of writing, a photograph) embedding their own thoughts and emotions into it hoping for someone else to come by and dig them out.

Just two news items that might be of interest. These are from earlier this month, but I’m sometimes slow when it comes to current affairs.

From Daily Finance: “Connecticut Attorney General Targets Amazon, Apple in E-Book Antitrust Probe.”

From The New York Times: “Biggest U.S. Book Chain Up for Sale”

So, both are signs of the evils of e-books? Or, this is just normal stuff that happens when the market (and the world) adjusts to new technology and market models? Questions, comments, concerns?

As Jason recently pointed out, the interweb is aflutter with Anis Shivani/Huffington Post backlash. I don’t care for lashings, but I’ve never been one to pass up a ride on the ol’ bandwagon, so away we go:

Steve O.K.’s Top Ten Bonanza of Things that Rate as the Most Overrated Things:

10. Professional Designers – Seriously, just get some college kids to do it pro bono.

9. Being the first to “turn a phrase” - Steal someone else’s instead and pretend it’s your own.

8.  Actually interviewing people – Make it up, especially if the person is too overrated to notice (I’m kidding, of course. This was amazing).

7. Constant news – No news is good news.

6. Electric pencil sharpeners – Fine, handcrafted pencil sharpening is a dying art. Support the arts!!!!

5. Not taking drugs before work – Acid is recommended.

4. New York City – More like “Big Yawn City.” Am I right, or am I right?

3. Listing things that are overrated – Because, you know, who really cares.

2. The Internet – Being so connected is not safe. Too many voices.

1. Being angered by the internet – If you knew everything everyone thought, I bet that you’d wish that they’d just shut up.

Which Goes First, Rules or Comedy?

We all know that no one can make fun of our mamas except us. Not that we’d want to, but this goes along with the idea that has been tossed around over the last couple weeks in Bark posts and comments: Many people seem to subscribe to the belief that it is in better taste to make fun of groups to which we belong than to make fun of those to which we do not. 

In her book, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, Judy Carter suggests that the starting comic begin by making fun of him or herself. It seems like rich and considerate advice. But we don’t want everyone talking about themselves all the time, so we move the circle out to include family, profession (assuming you do something besides trying to make people laugh), sex, race, political party, country, those who agree with your views on globalism. I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to define which groups we “belong” to. We belong to many, have intimate involvement with many, and have good reason to criticize the corruption of many. Read more »

There’s a TV phenomenon that has me under its spell, and it’s a type of reality show.

This isn’t one where people eat bugs–though they could conceivably have to cook them.  They’re competition shows, and they’re on the Food Network.  The Next Iron Chef and The Next Food Network Star.

See, chefs apply to be on the show, and then the top contenders are put through rigorous cooking and/or “star” challenges.  Basically, they’re going through the interview process times ten, and on TV for all of America to watch.  You can vote for your favorite online, though I’m not certain your opinion actually matters–one of my mother’s coworkers was a contestant on The Next Iron Chef a couple of seasons ago (chef Gavin Kaysen) and he knew who won long before the episodes ever aired.  He was cut about halfway through the series for under-seasoning his frog leg lollipops (I’m not kidding). Read more »