A while back I was interviewed for an online lit mag. The final version had a preface saying, basically, that I am a writer in isolation.
That’s true.
Archive for March 2009
A blank page
In Poetry on 26 March, 2009a blank page, decent
steady gaze, shrill voice, heroic,
superb brown eyes that trustful
wrap themselves unhelpful,
around, bind from normal,
head to foot so terrifying
Sam Pink is a sweet sweet boy
In Interviews on 22 March, 2009Sam Pink wrote a slayer of a book called I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF THEN KILL THE CLONE AND EAT IT from Paper Hero Press, whose editor gave me free UK shipping because he loves me. Or perhaps he was being a savvy businessman. No, no, I think he loves me. As does Sam Pink. I’m pretty sure that’s what they whispered in my ear repeatedly as we built a blanket-and-cushions fortress in my room last night. But enough about me.
Writing, about writing
In Process on 18 March, 2009From ‘Good Writing, a Gazetteer & Guide’:
Pg. 14: “Write what you know” — Anonymous (though often attributed to Ernest Hemingway).
Pg. 82: “First drafts are shit” — Ernest Hemingway.
Pg. 7: “It’s not wise to violate the rules until you’ve learned to observe them” — Lillian Hellman? (No, T.S. Eliot, a British poet born in St. Louis, Missouri.) Read the rest of this entry »
Verbal compulsion
In Reasons on 16 March, 2009What’s that Neruda line – “It was at that age poetry arrived”? Quoting Neruda’s a bit of a cliché. Except that everyone likes Neruda. Except those who don’t.
I feel like he said something really basic but meaningful in that tiny excerpt, though. About that particular point when words started falling out of your fingertips as well as your lips.
These words are ghostings
In Reasons on 13 March, 2009I. At the beginning, all I find is an out-of-focus vision. An incomplete image, gradually forming in my mind. It comes from nowhere, it’s a black and white slide. At times, the seminal image glides, as if it were a coat slipping off the chair, or a trolley which slowly runs on rails. Read the rest of this entry »
You have balls to call yourself
a “writer” you fucking loser
In Reasons on 9 March, 2009
I didn’t let on to anyone that I like to write for twenty-eight and a half years, give or take a few agonisingly illiterate ones towards the very beginning. I didn’t think I was good enough (still don’t) to even suggest such a stretch. And yet I wrote. I always wrote. I didn’t save it, I didn’t submit it anywhere, I didn’t show it to friends, but if I wasn’t quietly self-destructing through abuse of hallucinogens and bad relationships, I wrote.
Character and Setting
In Fiction on 5 March, 2009They leave a message. Well. Tommy has Tami call. She says hi Ty. Tommy wanted me to let you know that we’re doing another Poetry Explosion event in the spring and he’d like you to read. Right now we’re looking at two venues. One holds 300 people and the other 500. Either way the crowd should be more than decent.