linktastic

A few updates to my literary career:

Both Your Trouble is Ballooning, and Diary of When Being With Friends Feels Like Watching TV are in print and available for purchase. Which is rad.



Brooklyn Copeland was kind enough to publish a poem of mine in her beautiful, hand-made lit chap Taiga which is available for purchase here. And you can read a short interview with me here. (And see a giant picture of my face.)



Also, I was interviewed for the poetry podcast "The Moe Green Discussion" and you can listen to it here. Or you can get it off itunes.



And finally, a selection from my sequence "Dutch Baby Combo" is being featured on No Tell Motel this week and I am super excited about it.

poets should read this short story

from "The First Sally (A) OR Trurl's Electronic Bard"
by Stanislaw Lem

"Trurl had once had the misfortune to build an enormous calculating machine that was capable of only one operation, namely the addition of two and two, and that it did incorrectly. As is related earlier in this volume, the machine also proved to be extremely stubborn, and the quarrel that ensued between it and its creator almost cost the latter his life. From that time on Klapaucius teased Trurl unmercifully, making comments at every opportunity, until Trurl decided to silence him once and for all by building a machine that could write poetry. First Trurl collected eight hundred and twenty tons of books on cybernetics and twelve thousand tons of the finest poetry, then sat down to read it all. Whenever he felt he just couldn't take another chart or equation, he would switch over to verse, and vice versa. After a while it became clear to him that the construction of the machine itself was child's play in comparison with the writing of the program. The program found in the head of an average poet, after all, was written by the poet's civilization, and that civilization was in turn programmed by the civilization that preceded it, and so on to the very Dawn of Time, when those bits of information that concerned the poet-to-be were still swirling about in the primordial chaos of the cosmic deep. Hence in order to program a poetry machine, one would first have to repeat the entire Universe from the beginning—or at least a good piece of it."

...

"During the next two weeks Trurl fed general instructions into his future electropoet, then set up all the necessary logic circuits, emotive elements, semantic centers. He was about to invite Klapaucius to attend a trial run, but thought better of it and started the machine himself. It immediately proceeded to deliver a lecture on the grinding of crystallo-graphical surfaces as an introduction to the study of sub-molecular magnetic anomalies. Trurl bypassed half the logic circuits and made the emotive more electromotive; the machine sobbed, went into hysterics, then finally said, blubbering terribly, what a cruel, cruel world this was. Trurl intensified the semantic fields and attached a strength of character component; the machine informed him that from now on he would carry out its every wish and to begin with add six floors to the nine it already had, so it could better meditate upon the meaning of existence. Trurl installed a philosophical throttle instead; the machine fell silent and sulked. Only after endless pleading and cajoling was he able to get it to recite something: "I had a little froggy." That appeared to exhaust its repertoire. Trurl adjusted, modulated, expostulated, disconnected, ran checks, reconnected, reset, did everything he could think of, and the machine presented him with a poem that made him thank heaven Klapaucius wasn't there to laugh—imagine, simulating the whole Universe from scratch, not to mention Civilization in every particular, and to end up with such dreadful doggerel! Trurl put in six cliche filters, but they snapped like matches; he had to make them out of pure corundum steel. This seemed to work, so he jacked the semanticity up all the way, plugged in an alternating rhyme generator—which nearly ruined everything, since the machine resolved to become a missionary among destitute tribes on far-flung planets. But at the very last minute, just as he was ready to give up and take a hammer to it, Trurl was struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it was fed up, through, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they'd all be when it was dead and gone. Then it asked for pen and paper."

... and so it continues.

alice blue

I S S U E  T H I R T E E N

P O E T R Y

jennifer stockdale
thomas patrick levy
ruth williams
dana guthrie martin
trey jordan harris
jenn marie nunes
daniela olszewska
nate slawson
russell jaffe


P R O S E

katie jean shinkle
sam martone
karin gottshall
michael k meyers
jenniey tallman
nate liederbach
reynard seifert

if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it...

I want to talk about this female publishing conversation, rampaging rampaging all over the internet over and over again.

See... I'm torn. And I think nobody has it quite right.

I agree that it sucks. The numbers are clear. More men are published. Not because there are more men writers. But they are.

But I think it's also possible that a lot of editors are simply choosing the work that they prefer.

However, how did they decide what they prefer?

Who decided what qualifies as "good?"

It's hard to deny that the standards for "quality" were decided by a patriarchy.

To deny that is to be kind of ignorant.

Does being a "good writer" by society standards mean writing "like a man"? And what does that mean?

I can't deny that I've noticed that, while not across the board, men and women write differently.

I don't necessarily know how to define that relationship.

I can't deny that I think it's rare for a man to write a certain kind of "pretty" poem. I would call them girl poems.

I am not saying that guys cannot or do not write pretty poems. They do. Often.

I think of my friend who got her MFA in Fiction. She frequently complained about the workshop. Her teachers were men. She was often the only female in the room. Occasionally one of two females in the room. She wrote in vignettes. They talked about "traditional narrative structure--introduction, complications, climax, denoument" and "craft" as though a story told in vignettes could not be crafted. They had a framework they were working from, a tradition, a set of hard and fast rules about what makes a story a "good" story. She talked about the female narrative structure-- like the female orgasm-- in waves.

I wrote a paper about a female writer line... in terms of Alice Notley, HD, Plath. We have a history too. It's often told in relational terms. (Notley in terms of Berrigan, HD in terms of Pound or Eliot or Freud, Plath in terms of Hughes). Female writers have patrons.

Yet I've been published. And most of my favorite living writers are women. And I know this to be true of many people. Man and woman alike.

As an editor, with another female editor, I find myself in constant battle. Forced to think about balance when we are making final decisions. Yet, I've rarely had to work to hard to come to a gender evenness in the poetry we publish. It's not always perfect, but it's usually quite balanced.

In prose, we have to work harder. Literally soliciting women writers we like because we can't find a piece by a woman in our submissions that we like. (What is the definition of "good" again... who defined what it means to be "good")

We get less prose submissions by women as well. That's simply a fact.

My fellow editor often complains that I ask her to try to find at least some female writing we would want to publish. "Do I have to?" she sighs. "Why do I have to?"

I feel like, as a feminist, we have to try to publish women. But also, it feels weirdly wrong to seek women out.

I don't even know how to begin making sure LBGTQ or various ethnic groups. I could be making the whitest magazine in the world and not even know it.

Perhaps editors should start asking for headshots with their submissions.

I'm going to start publishing only beautiful people. (What is beautiful? Is that what I see in magazines? Who "determined" beauty?)

I was talking to a few girlfriends the other day... we all agreed that Crispin Glover is among our favorite celebrity crushes. I remember him in that Charlie's Angels remake described as the "creepy thin man" or something like that.

Did you know that, etymologically, author stems from "to father."

I always wish I was the kind of person who automatically called somebody's partner their "partner"... but I usually call them husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend first... and then think, in my head, that I should have said partner. It is work, conscious work, for me to make that distinction.

But really, what I want, is a partner. Not a boyfriend. Not a husband. A partner.

What I really want from a piece of writing is a rising moment. Under my skin. In my organs. Something I can feel. Something that makes me breathe, or stop breathing. Something that makes me wait or stop or not be able to wait or stop. It should change me.

I want that from a partner too.

That's if it's great. Most things are probably just sort of good, or competent, and sometimes just plain good.

What makes a thing good?

I know it's not the gender/race/sexual preference of the one writing it.

But I know that still matters too.

If only because our gender/race/sexual preference changes the way we view the world.

Some of that, probably, has to do with language.

I think of my friend Kim Philley's article in the New York Times about love. She is an american white girl who got an MFA. Her boyfriend was a Nigerian professional soccer player. Language defined their relationship.

Do you speak differently to the different people you speak to? I do.

I read an article recently that said you can tell if the person you are talking to is sexually interested in you because they start to match their speech patterns and language choices.

My favorite poet of all time is a gay man. Does that make me better somehow? Does it matter that he's also white?

I know these are complicated issues.

I like to read delirious hem. I like them better for having also done delirious lapel.

Perhaps all the publishers in all the world should read everything without any indication on the piece who wrote it. Every editor should have 3 filters before the piece gets to them.

Or perhaps they should just be thoughtful. Or at least ask the question.

But people keep asking the question and it hasn't changed. This whole conversation happened already with Spahr and Young's "Number Trouble"-- and all the conversations that happened then. VIDA is doing the same thing. The numbers aren't really changing.

But it's true... I don't feel like I've struggled much as a writer due to being a woman.

Is it wrong to admit that I'm tired of poems about being a mom?

I might change my mind with the right poem.

Then again, I don't want to be a mom at all.

Does that make it different?

I have to admit that I think the most important thing as an editor is to publish the work that you like.

I just don't think it means that the other stuff doesn't matter. Meaning: who you choose to publish. That says something about a journal. (Or magazine, or whathave you.)

I want to be the kind of person who thinks about it. Not as a way of deciding what goes into an issue, but after the issue is decided. What is it that brought these authors to me? What is it that brought these pieces out from the slush pile and into my journal? What made them "good"?

Do I like writing by women? By men? By a wide swath of the human population? Do I like writing in a variety of styles?

I think I do.

I read every issue I publish after it's out in the world. I try to see if my view of these pieces change. If I still love them like I did in my inbox. What does the rest of the world see?

There is a definite vision for alice blue, I think. A single issue seems to exude a "style"... like smelling eucalyptus if you walk near it's tree. But if you read it from Issue 1 I think it moves. I hope it's open, and opens--

"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."  The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

Notes on a 2011 Existence

It takes two buses to get to work in the morning. From my sleeply little neighborhood, I go to UW where I pick up my next bus. The people who ride this particular bus are traveling to Woodinville, right in the neighborhood of all those software moguls (ie, Microsoft). I get off well before that. My bus driver, however, cracks me up. Most days he’s rather quiet but sometimes he ends up chatting with a fellow passenger. One morning, I heard  him discussing language paradigms. This morning, he waxed philosophical about “intention” because a college aged girl had gotten on the bus, and then  it turned out her bus pass was expired. Her words “Yes, but I’m going to get a new sticker once I get on campus.” (We were, by the way, leaving campus.) The Bus Driver: “Well, ok. But you don’t have it yet. You must pay the fare.” The girl: “But I’m going to go get it now. It will cover this entire quarter, including today.”  The Bus Driver: “But I don’t know that you will. See. I don’t know what your intentions are.”

 

It went this way for several minutes. Then the bus driver went on to lecture on knowledge… what he’s learned and knows after he attended “the You of Double You” (which nobody says… it’s “YouDub”). Turns out, the man studied linguistics. While he was a metro bus driver. And now he is still a metro bus driver. Who, in his lecture on knowledge, basically said that people who don’t believe in the bible have no way of having more knowledge because their understanding of knowledge is based on the finite measure of man. He believes in the bible so his ability to reach knowledge is limitless. He forgot about creativity. Man’s shape as god. To create. To imagine. To seek what is outside the bounds of quantitative measure.

 

Oh well. He’s smart. And fun to listen to. That’s real bus entertainment right there.

 

…

 

I also like that, by taking my bike on the bus in to work, I can then ride home. That makes 1 hour of reading in the morning and 40 minutes of aerobic exercise in the afternoon. My commute is totally useable time.

 

…

 

Last night, I started two books. The first was Moby Dick, which I have probably started 80 times. But, I think it will stick this time. I made it preface + three chapters in (this was right before bed) and realized, maybe for the first time, how absolutely beautifully written it was. I read the first chapter wanting nothing other than to excerpt these exquisite passages. I’m excited to get home and read some more before bed.

 

The second book I started was Time of Sky & Castles in Air by Ayane Kawata (trans by Sawako Nakayasu). These poems are beautiful. And they remind me of Lorine Niedecker in certain ways. The first book is slim, tiny poems, highly imagistic. The second is a bit more surreal, as they were written from dreams. And a bit more lush than Niedecker. But I skipped ahead to a note about the author, and even in life she was a bit Niedecker-esque. Avoiding the sort of standard poetic culture.

 

 

…

 

 

I’m also working on the next alice blue chapbook. The art book is in works… fabric, poems screen printed… stitched into a poem. One of them will be a quilt.

 

 

…

 

I’ve been working on this long poem. Well. I’ve been working on these long poems. When I was 20 years old and at Evergreen and for this one class we had to do a “project” I made it my goal to write “the long poem.” I didn’t really succeed. I wrote a “sequence” instead. And suddenly, last summer, I could do it. The first is now out from Slash Pine Press as a chapbook. Or, it will be in the next week or so. There have been 3 or 4 more since then. They are maybe too grandiose but they feel so right now. So of the moment. So what I need to be working on.

 

…

 

Then there is cooking. Which I love. But right now it seems more like I love the “idea” of cooking than the actual act. Mostly because of time. I am never home. Or, hardly ever home. So tonight I’m going to an expensive restaurant (How to Cook a Wolf) because I still love to eat an nice meal.

 

And apparently, Maya Angelou wrote a cookbook. Maybe I should write a cookbook. Bringing your comfort food and asian cuisine together in one delicious dish.

 

I went to dinner at a friend’s house this week. Her and her husband made this phenomenal soft taco bar where everything was done from scratch. I watched them make corn tortillas and wondered why I had never made tortillas from scratch. It’s wildly simple. And makes every other tortilla I have ever made seem somewhat criminal.

 

…

 

I haven’t made any New Year’s Resolutions. I’d like to not be hung over every time I go out with friends. And I’d like to get back into riding my bike all the time, even though it’s harder to motivate myself when it’s cold out and the bus is so convenient. And I’d probably like to write more than I do, read more than I have been doing, grow some kind of plant. None of that will probably happen. And partially because, as it is right now, life is pretty goddamn good.

 

Ok. Here’s a New Year’s Resolution: I want to make chevre, mascarpone, and ricotta from scratch. 

 

Happy New Year!

 

Languaging the World

Since I work in a Jewish Religious School, I spend a lot of time with Hebrew speaking people. In fact, the Hebrew teachers are a mixture of UW students, old Israeli immigrants, and local professionals. All of them speak at least English and Hebrew, and many of them speak at least another language.

 

One of the teacher is a 19 year old UW student. She was born in Russia and Russian is her first language. But she also speaks perfect English, with no trace of an accent. And she also speaks Hebrew. And she can speak a small spattering of Spanish. At 19.

 

Last night, to celebrate the end of the semester, I went to a local pub. I sat sandwiched in the middle of 7 or so Hebrew teachers discussing Judaism, teaching at the Hebrew school, Jewish dating sites, Hebrew itself, occasionally speaking in Hebrew, at one point speaking in Spanish.

 

These were mostly conversations I was not a part of, though it was fascinating to listen to.

 

I was thinking about poetry. It’s another language. I speak this language. I used to speak Spanish, not very well, and I can still read with pretty solid comprehension and can usually understand someone speaking to me. I learned a little Greek and then I started muddling the Greek and the Spanish and now I don’t speak either and I can’t even remember the Greek alphabet. (Though I can still order a coffee or glass of wine, ask where the bathroom is, and tell someone that I am going for a walk by the sea. So… you know… the important thing. Or at least, these were the important things when I was there.) I have these languages in me now, a little bit, the trace of them. But Poetry I speak. I speak it well. I understand it. I can teach it like these Hebrew teachers are teaching all the little Jewish kids how to read the Torah.

 

Then I was thinking about something we talked about in grad school… Language is the medium through which we experience the world. I can’t remember who coined this idea… but it struck me, sitting at this table, that they are experiencing this world through this holy language (we’re talking Biblical Hebrew, here, not conversational Hebrew). Their experience of the world, then, is mediated by this language, and thus by their faith. What’s interesting about it is not how important their faith is to their lives, but how language makes that primary in their very use of it.

 

I don’t speak Hebrew. But I speak poetry. Poetry is the language through with my experience of the world is mediated. Does this make poetry my faith? How does this change the way I experience the world?

 

It’s not something I really ever thought about. Even as we discussed it in classes. But it certainly does. A friend once told me I was the most freakishly observant person he ever met. I watch people and the world. Lots of people do, maybe. But the smallest things. Is that my language, Poetry, mediating the world. A scrolling commentary, like the opening text of a movie on the screen, telling me what the world is like, each image, how I translate them into language.