Too much contemporary lyric poetry blurs together in my head, like wallpaper. (Which, I guess, makes the stand-outs stand out).

When I become a famous writer, anytime I write a blog post, no matter the content, other writers will comment on how smart and perceptive it is. They may even post their own poems as comments, like a kid showing the adults his crayon scrawlings, to get their attention. If I write one of my curmudgeonly, self-righteous posts, they'll write to tell me I have every reason to be indignant and disgusted. If I write that I think poets should love everybody, they'll tell me how much they love me. If I condemn all poems that begin with the letter "K," they'll confide (publicly) that they've always been a little ambivalent about K-Po ("One doesn't want to agree outright . . . I know I've read a poem by Ron Silliman that begins with 'K.'").

It seems like, whenever I hear a writer talk about how unsentimental he is (and it usually is a he), something pretty schmaltzy is bound to follow. If a macho intensifier ("relentlessly," "unflinchingly") is used to modify "unsentimental," then get ready for pure treacle.

Don't worry about un/sentimental. Just write interesting or affecting words, and deal with it in revision. What you resist persists.

As Long As They Spell the Name Right . . .

. . . or not. I mean, "Stephen Harrington" is a lovely Irish-Catholic name, and it was probably in contention when my parents gave me the name I have to this day - which is not Stephen. (I mean, I could see "James" or "John" - but how did "Joseph" become "Stephen"?)

To their credit, the good folks at Pinstripe Fedora have assured me the correction is on its way, as soon as their tech person gets back to Europe, where his computer is. Do check out the issue - aside from the editorial gaffe, it's a dandy collection of work!

It's not a contradiction, it's a PARADOX

From an ad for a "festival of writers":

"GENRE BENDING: THE FACES OF FICTION"

Early Stein (4th century BCE)

"Being a beginning. Being not yet beginning to be a beginning. Being not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. Being being. Being nonbeing. Being not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Being not yet beginning to be a not yet beninning to be nonbeing. Then suddenly, being nonbeing. And when it comes to being nonbeing, I don't know yet what's being and what's nonbeing."

- Chuang Tzu, trans. David Hinton

Joe Brainard's Parentheses. (The Best Part.)

(Peacock.)
(with little yellow flowers)
(the movie)
(Methodist.)
(As opposed to a refrigerator.)
(Without an airplane.)
(Second floor.)
(I was afraid to look at him)
(Especially good.)
(Boston)
(Mostly talk.)
(A girl.)
(where all the stores are)
(Tulsa's largest department store)
(I forget exactly what)
(so noisy)
(I had very long hair which was more unusual then that it is now.)
(I was going to ask to see him anyway.)
(It was the truth.)
(And I still do!)
(A flower that closes at four.)
(back view)
(Pale peach.)
(Made in Italy.)
(I still do that.)
(They were not married.)
(It had been in the cabinet.)
(That she was half Negro.)
(Angora.)
(wet dreams)
(100 Strings?)
(when in bed but not asleep yet)
(From a movie with Sandra Dee.)
(but old enough)
(I like small feet.)
(I like underwear.)
(Dyed.)

To Be Continued. (Maybe.)

Blog as Georgic?

As for content, Jen's blog might be a kind of 21st c. georgic. That would complicate the time thing (or does already), b/c it introduces the cyclical, which is spittin distance from the mythic. Personally, I think you can have that alongside the historical (and do). When the climate starts radically altering the seasons due to human activity? That is where the two come together and crash.

And the georgic is another of those complicated genres: is it a real farming manual that's written in poetic form? Or a poem posing as a (faux) farming manual? From the little I know, I'd say Virgil's was the former. As is Jen's, not infrequently.

But the connection between literature (literacy) and agriculture is much older. In fact, arguably writing (viz., cuneiform) was invented to keep track of agricultural commodities. Here is a bit from John Heise's Akkadian Language:

"Already from the 9th millennium onwards clay tokens (Lat. calculi) where used to depict objects and abstract numbers and was widely spread: from present day Sudan to Iran. The clay tokens in various forms and shapes were used as counters. Each type of counter represent e.g. a bull's head, a sheep, a basket, a bar of gold etc. They were, in many cases at least, pictographicallly used: that is, they depicted concrete objects. They have meaning in any language. . . .

"A diacritical mark on a three dimensional token was often not clearly copied on the outside of a clay bulla and had to be inscribed by hand. In the two dimensional writing a symbol like could stand for 'sheep', not a pictogram anymore. Further diacritical marks, like removing a segment could indicate 'ewe' (female sheep) where as removing two segments could be an indication of a sheep in gestation."

And this from Ira Spar, on the Metropolitan Museum of Art web site:

"One of the earliest written texts from Uruk provides a list of 120 officials including the leader of the city, leader of the law, leader of the plow, and leader of the lambs, as well as specialist terms for priests, metalworkers, potters, and others.

"Some of the earliest signs inscribed on the tablets picture rations that needed to be counted, such as grain, fish, and various types of animals. These pictographs could be read in any number of languages much as international road signs can easily be interpreted by drivers from many nations."

(All of which raises the obvious literary-historical question: did the Sumerians blog? . . .)

Everything that involves more than one person (even if the other is imaginary) is political. Watering your lawn is political. So is eating a cheese pizza (BGH or non-BGH cheese?). But then blogs don't necessarily accomplish the same political ends as, say, calling all of your friends on the the telephone to get them to call Corporation X about abuses by one of their contractors. Or going door-to-door to generate support for a city commission candidate. And poetry? Well, poetry makes a lot of things happen, but not the same things as phone banking or canvassing, in my experience.

Oh - I nearly forgot - HAPPY X-MAN! - I mean, X-Box -

no, seriously, Merry X-Ma$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Then there is the very fact of seriality, which opens a gap between the duration of the narrative and the time of the audience. ("Is Little Dorrit dead??") Does Twitter aim to close these two temporalities?

I do think Jen's art-blog is also a political blog, insofar as it comments on GMO crops or community-formation or women farmers. Or blogs and MFA-granting institutions, for that matter.

For more on these, and other alphabetic ruminations, see Tinfish Editor's Blog.