SCARY

"Almost as an afterthought, the report also noted that the number of adults reading poetry had continued to decline, bringing poetry's readership to its lowest point in at least 16 years."

Read it here.

My in-laws came this weekend. That means, it was crappy and cold in Chicago. No fail. Every time. Lake Michigan was grumpy. The sky was secretive. A taxi driver said, "bitch," 17 times in 9 blocks. Whoa.

Poetry later. Pictures now.

I've been reading, overhearing and actively participating in a lot of conversations about poetry criticism lately. The main points of which seems to be:

• Criticism of contemporary poetry is largely ineffective, whether it be fanboy lovefests or Comic Book Guy "worst poem ever" disregard.
• Thus, criticism is rarely careful critiques based solely on the work; the product of tools and choices "mastered" by the poet.
• People write poetry. Few people read poetry. Fewer people read poetry criticism. About 3 people are writing it. We are losing this critical language, our ability to express it as well as our ability to work over it in our heads.
• Poetry book reviews are trying too hard to be like NY Times book reviews, meaning the focus of the reviews that are being written is often on the reviewer's ability to review, rather than on the important work done in the book...or, they come across like infomercials, "Now with 50% more lyric power!"

There are many reasons that we are suffering this critical downfall, not the least of which are:

• Academic fallout. Now that all poets are MFA trained, once they leave the rigors of the the academic world, its easy to revel in he ease of the pop-critical thumbs up, thumbs down.
• The Internet makes it possible to say anything without any real thought and from a safe distance...I blog, I get it, I've said some things here that I would never say in "real" life to real people. I'm trying to be more thoughtful with that, to imagine possible reactions and to address them in my original statement, but I've only got my brain.
• The flipside to this is the assumption that a bad review for one book equates a bad review for all of poetry, and why kick they guy while he's down. With so few readers, why try to convince more people to not pick up a book of poetry. Your mom told you about this a long time ago, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
  
• The poetry world is so small, soo small, that's it hard to be critical without being critical of your friends, or at most, of your friends' friends.
  

Now, the only solutions for this that I can see, is that we, as a community of writers, need to be more honest and thorough and knowledgeable with our criticism. That if we don't like something, we say so, but that we state so sincerely and with reason. That we realize that we no longer have the privilege of simple likes and dislikes. That we must carry ourselves with a literacy that at times will seem elitist, but with the hope that it will trickle down to credibility in a society that has no place for poems, that it will make worthy our art for those we hope to have read it. We are not the "everyman" and our poems no longer the voice of the people. But maybe, maybe, if we work hard to convince our wider world that we and what we do is worth their time, than maybe we can regain a foothold in society's cultural biology...maybe.

Zapruder's critical criticism

Black Ocean's critical conditions

We saw everything good.

I'm not good at growing hair, but I could use a haircut now. I don't remember my last haircut, but I do remember talking to the barber about counterfeit money. I don't worry too much about counterfeit money, and I don't like worrying about my hair, which is why I like getting haircuts from this barber...I leave with less worry than when I go in.

Have you read CA Conrad's new book? I couldn't afford it when I bought it, but I also figured I couldn't afford to not buy it, so my consumer instinct won out. Conrad would be one of the writers involved with the violence I mentioned yesterday, but failed to mention yesterday, though his focus seems to be much more on sexual violence and language that perpetuates it and allows it. Yet, the violence in "The Book of Frank," is eerily juvenile and has a way of making you feel sympathetic towards Frank...you know, in his heart, that Frank is not scheming, manipulative or inherently violent, he just doesn't know any better. Thus you are left with sense that punishment is not the proper course, rather you want to sit him down. Talk. Tell him "no." This idea is one that Conrad occasionally makes reference to;

Frank's diary
returned
by mail
when he'd
lost it on
a bus

"Dear Boy come to Jesus"
penciled in the margin
for 108 pages

There is a "normal" world outside these poems, but much like "Bonnie and Clyde," you grow hesitant to be a part of it, instead leaning much more towards Frank's world and the innocence, however crooked, from which it is seen.

afterthought...I also like how Conrad basically spelled cock on the cover (CAC)

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about violence: violent acts, violent imagery, both physical and mental violence, as well as the point where frivolous playfulness turns to regrettable violence, those times when games end because someone is bleeding, on fire, or both. Violent images and circumstances are becoming more and more prevalent in poetry, at least in the sense of being only a part of where the poem happens and not the explicit happening in the poem...which seems very reflective of our world. I know for me personally, this has taken the shape of all the horrific things I see just walking to and from work here in the south side of Chicago; at least they used to seem horrific before they became routine. All the homeless in the park and the very public manner they perform what we consider to be private acts. Gun shots. People screaming at no one in particular. Aggressive police officers. Etc. Etc.
Anyway, what I guess I'm getting at is that I've noticed that these things are becoming the backdrop for my poems...that my usual themes are still intact, but that where once these themes played out in very natural and serene settings, now they take place in very dense spaces made up of this violence. The only problem with this, that I only recently discovered, is that I'm still trying to figure out how to negotiate these spaces. How to not lose voice inside them. How to not be as overwhelmed by them in my poems as I am in real life...or at least how to express that overwhelmed-ness in an artful and interesting way.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I am alone in this, or even the first to address it, as I've read really good poems that manage to embody these ideas without being manipulated by them, i.e., Mathias Svalina's, "Play" poems, or the new Aase Berg collection, "With Deer" from Black Ocean. The problem with me though, is that soon I'll be moving back to Iowa where these daily horrors will once again become horrific and outside of the daily fabric, and therefore, outside the scope of my poems.

I think I'm going to write as much as I can everyday between now and June.

Rocks, Lake, Rocks, Lake, Building

Lake, Lake, City, Lake

Yesterday I went to the lake. I live right by there and since I only have about 3 months left here I figured I should take advantage of that. These are pictures of lake and the city. These are the only pictures I took that don't look just like U2's new album, or Joshua Beckman's book, "Your Time Has Come."

I read Kate Greenstreet's "This is Why I Hurt You," twice this weekend. It's quick, but dense. It's what I imagine quicksand to be like, or tornadoes...which is kind of how the book hits you; there is an unsettling rumble, there are circumstances that one would consider ominous, and then there are lines that make you duck and cover. The situations in which a biting honesty is thrust upon us aren't so much surprising as they are a complete rediscovery of what honest is and can be. They say that in trepidation our true selves are exposed, and this is what I believe Greenstreet is after, only, without the usual dramatization, and though I will leave her version of this for you to discover, I will say that it is just as terrifying and grotesque as anything you could imagine.

Yesterday my nephews came to town to take in St. Patrick's Day in Chicago. Promise me you'll never do that to your kids. The green river freaked them out, their dad's wallet almost got stolen, and seconds later they were in the midst of a completely unrelated fight. People swear loudly in these situations, including myself...and people throw bottles and then kick people for throwing bottles...this I did not do. Anyway, you mix that many drunk people with Kermit the frog and you're just asking for trouble.

You buy books = I buy books.

About 10 copies of the Pingel/Wilkinson chap have sold thus far. This means that over the last week I've had (10 x 6 - .47 x 10...60 - 4.70= 55.30, right?) some money to spend on books myself. What follows is a list of the books I've chosen to spend that money on:

Light Boxes, Shane Jones

The Pond, Zachary Schomburg

Someone Else's Body, Claire Donato

Lining, Lisa Fishman

This is Why I Hurt You, Kate Greenstreet

I'm still waiting on some, others are already here...either way, this is shaping up to be a pretty sweet weekend...well, that and the fact that this is St. Patrick's Weekend here in Chicago. Guinness, Bushmill's and poetry, hell, maybe I'll even read a little Seamus Heaney for good measure. Actually, I shouldn't even say that. Heaney is on my lame list, though he's not a "permanent" member. If you feel strongly the other way, I'd listen to your arguments.

Finally getting to see CA Conrad in person made this the raddest March on record. He told stories about Franks, cunts and abortions, but they were all so tender and sad I missed them when they were gone. Aaron Kunin was really entertaining too and I felt inadequate not leaving with his book, but money is tight and I'm not getting any smaller...which actually just leads to more feelings of inadequacy. I feel bad about Magdalena Zurawaski. Her voice was almost a perfect tonal match to the espresso machine and a lot of her reading got lost because of it.

I realized, just today after receiving an email rejection from Brown, that applying to graduate school is a lot like playing baseball...you can fail most of the time and still be considered successful. You just need that one big hit and every other at bat is forgotten...I stepped into the batter's box 4 times and got a single solitary hit, which equates to a .250 average...which is more than enough to keep me in the show, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

I fucking love baseball...especially the Cardinals, and I think this year is a good year to be a Cardinal fan.

I got Shane Jones' novel, "Light Boxes" in the mail yesterday. Two tremendous things happened immediately afterwards. One, was reading the first 15 pages of that book. In a sense, it was like the difference between looking at pictures and seeing it for yourself...meaning, the poems of Jones' I've thus far read were awesome but telling of a much grander place, and this novel is the realization of that idea. Jones' style needs room to breathe...is like a goldfish willing to grow as big as his space allows...and though in most cases his poems are perfect enough, its nice to see what he does with the extra room. In short, I'm really looking forward to spending a little more time with this book.
The second tremendous thing was what the protective sleeve around the book had written on it. "HEY THANK YOU BENJAMIN." I immediately decided that was what my manuscript was now called, and I wrote two more poems towards its completion. So...I think I owe Adam Robinson a bit of gratitude...

thanks.

My official acceptance letter from Iowa came in the mail over the weekend. It didn't say anything too much...at least nothing I hadn't already heard in my conversations with Jim Galvin, but there was one little piece of info I was really excited about...Dan Beachy-Quick is on the visiting faculty list for 2009. There have been spurts over the last few years that I have been completely fascinated with Beachy-Quick's work, beginning with "Spell," and continuing through his "Whaler's Dictionary." His use of established narratives, the way he redecorates certain spaces within them, is genius. That said, the level of literacy one must have to fully appreciate this work is a little daunting...and I know I'm no where close to it. Regardless, it will be nice to work with him in whatever capacity I'm allowed.

Hey, are you going to the Rabbit Light Live reading tomorrow? Information about that would look like this: The second iteration of Rabbit Light Live is this Tuesday 8pm at New Wave Coffee (2557 N. Milwaukee Ave in Chicago) featuring 3 stellar writers:

Aaron Kunin (Los Angeles), author of a new novel The Mandarin (Fence) and Folding Ruler Star (Fence).

CAConrad (Philadelphia), author of a new collection of poetry: The Book of Frank (Chax)

Magdalena Zurawaski (Maine), author of a new novel The Bruise (FC2).

Happy Birthday, Daddy.

Things I learned from you:

• How to appreciate cheap, canned, but cold, beer.
• How to shoot underhanded free throws.
• How to mess-up, but ultimately complete (how ever crooked), a thousand different household projects.
• How to play records without scratching them, and then how to listen to them with thanks that they, and the music they hold, exist at all.
• How to take a punch...in theory. My dad never punched me...to be clear.
• How to support your children, emotionally and financially, though mostly financially, while they try to be poets, bass players, or filmmakers well into "adulthood."

I've been thinking a lot lately about Dean Young. Specifically, the words Dean Young left with the patrons of The Empty Bottle the night of the No Thousands reading. In fairness, I must admit to having already left (I was trying to squeeze in both this and JMW's Rabbit Light Live), but there have been rumblings of it ever since, like how dog shit, if not properly avoided, winds up getting everywhere.

Janaka Stucky said this: Dean Young gave a great little speech before his closing reading at our event on Friday night (which packed the bar with roughly 200 people, causing the Fire Marshall to come and make them stop serving drinks) and talked about the declining publishing “industry” and the growing “tribe” of poets. In a nutshell: it’s not publishing that’s on the decline, but the big industry built around it—which was never designed for poets, who should revel in their growing numbers despite the doom-and-gloom predictions for the business around them. It was moving to see him step into the role of that night’s poet laureate unabashedly, but with humility. Bravo Dean.

This isn't necessarily a new idea; those of us working and living in the tribe have been aware of this for some time. However, I think its still significant in the sense that here was a man who can easily exist outside the tribe and is a commodity in the "big industry," finally recognizing all the work that is happening below him...and not just recognizing, but celebrating it. There are many writers in this world who bash the small press outfits for inundating the market...making it so there are more books than one can possibly ever hope to get their hands on. Saying that it takes the significance out of "properly" placing a manuscript. The big hiccup in this argument is that I, a poor-small-press-founding-blogger/poet, probably spend more money on poetry books in a year than Ted Kooser and fucking Billy Collins combined, but none of that is spent on presses like Random House or Penguin or Harper Collins, because they don't usually publish work that is of interest to me....most of my money goes to Octopus, Black Ocean, Cannibal, Greying Ghost or into my own press to make books that, I hope, others will find interesting. The important distinction to make though, is that the big publishing houses hope for broad audiences, the Barnes & Noble readers...them. Most of these small presses, would love for their books to be read by as many as possible, but we realize and market to our actual audiences...other poets...us. I have theories that this might be an extension of MFA workshops and the consistency of new work always floating around, a subconscious, but powerful interest in all things contemporary...but that seems a different post altogether. Anyway and in conclusion, I like the tribal nature of this community, and though you do have to prove your worth to be accepted, in the sense of the more traditional (read: actual) tribes won't bring in another mouth to feed if that personal has no skills benefiting the group. The upside? Once your in, you've got this ever growing community around you that actually wants you to succeed...like the New Pornographers or Broken Social Scene. And, we don't exist within a business model...we break them...like Rocky vs. Drago.

I've been listening to "Paul's Boutique" for about a week straight now...yesterday, I was walking home (taking pictures of dead things) and I caught a lady staring at me. At first I thought maybe she was concerned about the fact that I was photographing a dead squirrel, but then I realized that it was because I photographing a dead squirrel and mouthing the words to High Plains Drifter, which, if you weren't also listening to High Plains Drifter, I was photographing a dead squirrel and talking to myself rather excitedly.

I've sold 7 books so far (yeah...), get yours here: FAC&P. One thing I've noticed during this whole process...poetry is (maybe) sadly a self sustaining community. Example: People buy the Pingel/Wilkinson chap. That "money" is stored in Paypal where I can either transfer it to a debit card, OR have my own small press purchases deducted from it...which I do. In essence, the transactions become more or less like bartering and trading...books for books, in other words. If I make it into PhD school, I'm going to write a disertation about this.

Speaking of school, I got my rejection from UMass, which was a real close second to Iowa in my point scale (yes, Jon, I did use a point scale to whittle down my MFA list). What took the sting out of it was being able to talk to Jim Galvin a little bit more about the Writer's Workshop. He gave me lots of things to be "happy about," not the least of which was full funding for the two years I'm there. He also told me that I can take book making classes at UI and they will count towards the MFA (I think that counts as the super bonus).

AT made me socks and then made me pose for this picture...she's a totally boss lady.

B.J.'s Pictures of Dead Things