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!