Get You Going!

Cooling Process

So, it's been a semester filled with a lot of writing. Don't know why or where it all came from, and I'm exhausted enough to hope it continues. I do. But, I feel a great revision stage coming. Working on Wonderlife poems and some hunting poems. I shouldn't forget all the others, though. How is this balanced?

New Background

The new background is courtesy of a painting I saw with my brother and girlfriend and the Indainapolis Museum of Art. It is Streetlight by Constance Richardson. You will find it here: http://www.imamuseum.org/art/collections/artwork/streetlight-richardson-constance

The Top 10's

Inspired by my pal Justin Crawford, top 10 lists (with disclaimers). I welcome convo.

Albums

10. Cage the Elephant – Cage the Elephant

9. Sam’s Town – The Killers

8. Something Weezer

7. Toxicity – System of a Down

6. The Shepherd’s Dog – Iron & Wine

5. The Boy With the Arab Strap – Belle and Sebastian

4. Sublime – Sublime

3. The Battle of Los Angeles – Rage Against the Machine

2. Wonder Boys Soundtrack – various

1. Any Given Wes Anderson soundtrack

Notables: Andrew Bird (though, only songs), Elton John (again, songs), Youth (Matisyahu), and various important rap, though I’m still figuring that out.

This is the area of all of these that is weakest. I’m pretty sold on my top 4-5, but I’m a song-guy at my core. Fascinated with the idea of the “album,” but as far as what holds sway over me – songs.

Films

10. V for Vendetta Wachowski Bros

9. The Sting George Roy Hill

8. Testament Lynne Littman

7. House of Sand and Fog Vadim Perelman

6. It Happened One Night Frank Capra

5. Mary Poppins Robert Stevenson

4. No Country for Old Men Cohen Bros

3. Psycho Hitchcock

2. There Will Be Blood P.T. Anderson

1. Bottle Rocket Wes Anderson (any Anderson, but this is what I consider his most quintessential)

Notables: The Searchers John Ford, Billy Elliot Stephen Daldry, Star Wars: A New Hope Lucas, The Andersonville Trial George C. Scott, Shaun of the Dead Edgar Wright, and Paths of Glory Stanley Kubrick.

Strong area here; judged on a variety of criteria. Story-telling, acting ability, character development, message, art direction, themes (or genres, I guess), and some good home-grown-love.

Literature

10. Erasure Percival Everett

9. The Death of Jim Loney James Welch

8. Selected Poems William Carlos Williams

7. The Elephant Man Bernard Pomerace

6. Y the Last Man Brian K. Vaghaun

5. The Suffers of Young Werther Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe

4. The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake Breece D’J Pancake

3. The Book of the Dead Man Marvin Bell

2. The Man Suit Zachary Schomburg

1. The Dream Songs John Berryman

Notables: Less than Zero Bret Easton Ellis, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt Aimee Bender, Today I Wrote Nothing Daniil Kharms, Circle of Pain Paul Eluard, The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, Exceptions and Melancholies Ralph Angel, It Is Daylight Arda Collins, Whole Milk Jim Goar, My Vocabulary Did This to Me Jack Spicer, Animal Farm George Orwell, My Name Is Asher Lev Chaim Potok, Lolita Vladimir Nabokov, A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemmingway, and Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Stranger Albert Camus, American Buffalo David Mamet.

Um, very tough. Garnered as many as I could, and had to make some sad cuts. But, I wanted to get the holy 10. But, any of these could easily switch places. Kharms and Eluard, Bender and Hemingway, Orwell and Mamet… these are down here because I either haven’t read all of the book(s) (e.g. Bender’s, read 3 of the stories thus far, but count it in my lineage already). Mamet is amazing, but I went with not only an interesting plot play in The Elephant Man, but also innovative dramatic writing, staging, mise en scen, and overall challenges to actors, directors, and designers. Of course, I know both of us could come up with many top ten lists, genre specific. But it was fun to get this into only 10, cross-genre.

New Books

On the recommendation of some cool people, I've been picking up some books:

Famous Americans Loren Goodman (this is the 2nd time I've bought it; I don't know who has my first copy, but all I'm hoping is they're enjoying it). Rec: Thanks, Jim Goar.

Circle of Pain Paul Eluard. Rec: Thanks, Zach Schomburg. (Eluard is a French Surrealist)

Today I Wrote Nothing Daniil Kharms. Rec: Thanks, Zach Schomburg. (Kharms -- Russian Absurdist)

Own Face Clark Coolidge. Rec: Schomburg's blog. (Home grown guy)

And, this is not a book, but I ordered the movie Tenure with Luke Wilson. Check it out -- about an English prof trying to get... tenure.

Kharms

Wow.

And many thanks to Zachary Schomburg.

http://polyhymnion.org/lit/harms/

Submissions (September)

Sent out a handful of poems to a handful of magazines. After going back through them, I think I put too many poems in the word document. I fear I wasted a bunch of time by accidentally going over the amount I was allowed to send. Hopefully they'll like them enough to not cause them to reject the words because of a number error.

Schomburg reading

ALSO, Zachary Schomburg will be coming to West Liberty University up in/near Wheeling, West Virginia on October 5th (10/5) at 8 pm... somewhere on campus.

I would not miss this for the world. Literally.

New Schomburg Material

Not only is this a really cool online journal, but Schomburg's poetry is a fresh meditation on a person I think we all kind of are. And, if you're feeling prose-y, you'll greatly appreciate it.

http://blogs.saic.edu/dearnavigator/category/fall2010/

New Poems

Got a few new poems in the works. One is a deep-image/Dead Man inspired series called Compost Man. Still a working title. All are poems about things inside this man's body. In full tribute to this blog, I made it so he has airplanes in his teeth.

Also wrote a poem about going shopping when you're hungry, and the speaker ends up buying Alexander Hamilton, I think, by the end of the poem.

Also jotted down a tight, little poem that's a modern inspiration on WCW's "This is just to say."

I probably will not be putting poems on this blog anymore, as I don't want to have any confusion whatsoever about availability of publication when I submit to magazines.

Lastly, from the writing front, working on a short story. The main character is "the claw-foot tub man" and he wakes up with total memory loss and in a claw-foot tub.

Books, ongoing

Picked up Anthony Bourdain's first(?) book Kitchen Confidential over the long weekend. Don't really know how I'm going to have time to read it. My girlfriend says I have ADD when it comes to reading. Can I help it if I am a connoisseur of words!?

Basically, I'm reading an array of books. Like I mentioned, Kitchen Confidential because Anthony Bourdain is the best thing to happen to network television probably ever.

Will start reading Robert Hass's new book of poems (pretty gargantuan in size, actually) either tomorrow or Thursday, depends when I can get to the WVU bookstore, and, as always, praying they have the books in stock!

Reading Aimee Bender's story "Marzipan" from her collection of short stories Girl in the Flamable Skirt. Reminds me of Schomburg's stuff; this guy (the father in the story) developed a huge hole in his stomach, one you can literally see through and to the other side. And his wife just gave birth to the narrator's grandmother. Love it!

Also greasing the wheels on Matthew Zapruder's book The Pajamist. Amazon tricked me on this one and sent me a really shameful library copy where they ripped off the front and back cover to paste on a blue, generic hardback... WHY!?

Never going away from Breece D'J Pancake's collection of short stories. Such a great voice.

Oh top of all of that...? I've got a Lance Armstrong book that has probably 3 chapters left in it. I just got too busy actually riding my bike over the summer and neglected the literature.

Speaking of bikes... I am salivating to getting back out and putting some serious miles into my legs on my road machine.

Recent Fun

Yesterday I read Hotel Insomnia by Charles Simic (tough for me to get past capitalized first letters of lines... shallow, I know) which was a pretty good read. Really get a sense of how a book of poems should work together from this selection.

In between or after or... 3 dimensionally timed around, I read some Ralph Angel. Been reading through his book Exceptions and Melancholies which has selected poems from a couple of his previous books to-date as well as some new poems. So far (and I've reached the final section now), I like his stuff more in the "New Poems" section and the poems in the latter half of "Neither World."

Then I read "A Room Forever" which is a Breece D'J Pancake short story in his one and only book -- a collection of short stories. Justin Crawford turned me on to Pancake last year, and I've slowly but surely gotten around to devouring a couple of the stories. So far, "A Room Forever" is my favorite. Pretty dark, yes. Shorter than the others I've read of Pancake's ("Trilobites" and "Hollow" being the other two) and written in first person.

Zachary Schomburg is coming out with a new chapbook available here http://sporkpress.com/things.html

On top of all of this, I learned that my favorite actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) will be starring next to Robert Downey, Jr. in the next Sherlock Holmes movie in December 2011! What a fantastic evening!

2nd year whoa

Ironic that my last blog was about winding down the first year. I knew this would happen -- totally forget to write during the summer, be the guy with every intention, blah -- and so "it's me again margaret" back writing on this electronic bulletin board. It's like I don't have any push-pins, just that bully who wrote in Sharpie on the cork and years down the road we'll paint that cork maybe a sky blue, but, really, whatever is leftover from painting your room. And maybe we'll tear off the edges and take that panelling from the basement walls and stick it to the sides to make a statement about bulletin boards since we all need statements about bulletin boards. And don't you like where this is going. Have at some of these posts, and wherever they go have a couple of rounds for me in remembrance DO THIS in remembrance in airplanes in places that keep you in other words that let your in in.

Winding down the 1st year

Whew... so I'm barely 1 minute into my scheduled office hours today and I've already exhausted my normal run of things on the internet. Good thing I brought along an Aimee Bender book and a Ralph Angel book to keep me company. Still trying to find my copy of Levis' Wrecking Crew. If I don't, I'll owe the library some money.

ProcastiLondon

Whew!

Long time since I've written on here. Going through a phase of fascination about fantasizing about writing fiction. I'll be taking a grad fiction workshop in the fall, so... I'm gonna be writing some serious short stories (or, rather, a "serious" amount of short stories).

The Greene Room interview and performance is on its way to me in the form of a DVD. Be advised... poems read on there (mine, that is) are sketchy, a la: they haven't really been revised much because I'm a slack-artist.

Guess we'll see where this adventure goes from here, yeah?

Eternal Gaze Pt 2

Eternal Gaze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQcwLahgIVQ

Artist Evangelists

Hope you like my slideshow. These artists have the same effect as evangelists at old-timey country church revivals. All influential to my craft in their own various ways.

Alberto Giacometti animated short

Check it out! Eternal Gaze!

Rejections

So far... rejected from DIAGRAM and Handsome. Both great mags. Both let me down very softly, nothing harsh at all.

It's funny, I get depressed and upset for about 5 minutes, then I laugh and quite honestly don't care. Figure I'll wear someone down eventually. These are only the first places I've ever submitted to. Can't expect instant success I reckon.

Oh, and submit to these places; they got back to me in a matter of days (hours, in Handsome's case).

Twitter

By the way, I'm on twitter.

Follow me:

matthewllondon is my username (or twitter name... whatever it's called).

and, for kicks, you can follow my decade-down-the-road coffee/bike shop I'm going to open in North Carolina (hopefully. fingers crossed):

UnionJaxBnB -- Union Jax Bikes n Beans

The Green Room Interview

Hey all you fans! (chuckle)

Just got an email inviting me to be showcased on WCTV's show The Green Room.

The show focuses on talent in Green County, Pa (Southwestern Pa).

Apparently, I'll get 15 minutes where the host interviews me (casually) and then 15 minutes at the end where I can read stuff that I've written.

I hope I can upload a link or a video file of it.

The show will be taped next Wednesday at 5:45 at Waynesburg University. I get a DVD!

Any suggestions on what to read? Thought about starting off with a Schomburg and/or Goar poem. Maybe even Rod Padgett (the namesake of this blog).

We shall see.

Oulipo project

Working on an Oulipo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo) poetry project where I take the 5th line from each of my poems that I have saved on my computer to date and make one Super-poem from them. This will be a long process as I don't intend to just take the lines and then drop them onto a page and THERE YA GO. I'm thinking up another system to devise how to put the lines together. Right now they are arranged alphabetically (by poem title) on the page.

More to come.

Boone Co., WVa.

The damn clutch

-- this I could never say.

My dad believed in the good book

and psychology books and the $5.95 books

and he believed in dirt roads because

unlike Tennessee roads they were there.

I practiced driving his truck

because that's what 13 year old boys do

on abandoned mine roads.

That stick shift with its glossy red paint

job and grey plastic trim around the wheel-wells

stalled on every hill and each flat ground.

The side roads were the worst:

smaller, steeper -- gravel big enough to jar.

I don't know why we drove the tributaries.

What's New

So, probably been like months since I've been on here.

Whose fault is that, eh? (guilty)

Well I seem to be writing more, yet it isn't quite in my aesthetic that I had so confidently thought was permanent. I am still more interested in the surreal, the absurd, the nihilistic even.

I'll toss my most recent workshop submission up here to give you a taste of the change.

But, never fear, I'm working on a series of "Man Poems" that I'm pretty happy with. I'm up to 6 so far. More to come

Bob Hicok.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16657

check him out.

Thanks, Aaron Rote!

Man 1

Through a tall glass of beer

we see

we capture

the odd-shaped men who sing in the chorus.

Our pamphlet and briefing

materials (supplemental)

assured us the men have little

chance of belonging to families.

One of the new recruits

wears a bucket hat

and uses his chewed fingernails

to extract the first man.

We breathe on him.

We return without reward.

Soccer from the Sidelines

He called me a Jew,

Donny did.

I learned his name

at a basketball game.

I am not a Jew.

This moment is indifferent.

This finger and thumb are confused.

He threw small portions of gravel

at me and the team I belonged to.

Donny’s team wore black.

We all wore red.

After the game,

we went to McDonalds

and got ice cream and Coke.

2 clouds 1 dead tree

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Long Time - No See (am i a caveman?)

That phrase always sounded prehistoric to me.

I'll toss a poem or two on here shortly. Getting back into the "swing of things" this new semester. Riding my bike to class now. Been some cold morning here in Morgantown, WV. I'm bundled up like an Inuit!