A Parting Shot

Maybe I should do a year-end wrapup of poems I got published or accepted. But instead I feel like ranting for a moment. Start the new year with a clean slate or something like that.

---

Investor's Business Daily decided to run a wonderfully ignorant editorial on Elizabeth Alexander's upcoming inaugural poem. Check that. It's not even on her inaugural poem, but on another poem of hers, "The Venus Hottentot."

IBD decides to skewer such lines as

"Her genitalia will float inside a labeled pickling jar . . . "

"Monsieur Cuvier investigates between my legs, poking, prodding . . . "

"Since my own genitals are public I have made other parts private."

and contrasts these with (a substantially briefer excerpt from) Maya Angelou's inaugural poem: "The dinosaur, who left dry tokens . . . ."

I'll leave it to other bloggers and pundits and poets to defend or attack the quality of the verse - a task that requires a larger sample than the one provided in the article. What pisses me off is the insistence that Alexander's verse is too dirty for public consumption. It's not even the implication that because she has written poetry that involves the word "genitalia" she will read such a poem. It's that such poetry is somehow out of place or uncouth.

The article snidely adds scare quotes around the phrase "swearing-in," belying a misunderstanding of swearing. You won't encounter a damn or a God damn or a fuck or a shit in Alexander's poem. No, you'll find repetitions of that clinical term "genitalia."

IBD all but fawns over Frost. But what would the writers do with this bit?:

PUTTING IN THE SEED

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Incidentally, follow the link for great sexual verse from Dickinson, Herrick, and others as well.

Have the writers never read Shakespeare? The Sonnets not sexual? In Hamlet alone I can think of three or four particularly dirty places (my favorite is "Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, / That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, / But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them."). How about my favorite Greek playwright, Aristophanes? How about Whitman? Millay? Chaucer? Ovid? And this is me explicitly trying to avoid the latter half of the twentieth century.

You know what, let's just put on a performance of Lysistrata following the ceremony. 2400 years later, and it's still a good plan.

Deadwood, diluvium, Conclusions, Circles

So the Deadwood: The Complete Series boxed set arrived yesterday. The physical set is put together really nicely and only cost $75 when I ordered it.

I pop in the final DVD and listen to David Milch talking about how the series ended. He is visibly and audibly disappointed at how things went down.

SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE WORKS AHEAD

He talks at length about endings, how when we wrap up narratives we're all agreeing upon a lie - that a story does in fact end. Ironically, that's actually something I loved about the way the series currently ends. It's abrupt. It's not pretty. Everything is left hanging and therefore just about anything is possible. It avoids the huge problem, the inevitable letdown, that is the wrapup for most massive and otherwise impressive projects.

Dante's Divine Comedy suffers from this problem. When Dante the pilgrim emerges from Hell and sees the stars, they're far away, possibilities. But the closer he gets to Heaven, the more boring things become. Heaven becomes stasis. Alice Notley's brilliant and moving The Descent of Alette nicely improves upon Dante by offering up a world free from the Tyrant but not trying to replace it as the author. Monty Python realized that the hilarity of a sketch would not be undermined if they just stopped it instead of trying to find a final punchline.

A quick note before I tie this to diluvium - try to find Notley's sequence in its original publication, The Scarlet Cabinet.

Milch's comments got me thinking about diluvium and how it ends. I've long thought of the end as a lie of sorts, but my conception of time works cyclically. My dissertation is not just another book project, but an integral part of a worldview I'm expressing over the course of many books and other works. Things begin, so to speak, with El Oceano y La Serpiente / The Ocean and The Serpent. All the incidental poems I write, particularly the sequences, occur in the world as it exists after the conquest in OcSerp. The Icarus Sketches stretches itself through that world. The Angel of Music, a musical I have yet to write, occurs to either side of that world (heaven and hell are to the sides, not above and below, in this concept). After, a graphic novel, fleshes out hell a bit more. And there's a series of stories I haven't written yet that lead up to the world being flooded. Which brings us to diluvium. Noah and his wife, floating out there, figuring out themselves and each other. And I'd planned to have things come full circle, which is somewhat depressing. Despite all they learn, they are one of the ships (you didn't think it would just be two people saved, did you?) that appears on the horizon and lands at the beginning of OcSerp, and everything starts again. Although that's not totally depressing, as even OcSerp presents the existence of dissenting voices (insisting the whole time that these are marginalized by the history-makers).

Or at least that's my view if I look at it as an ouevre. But after listening to Milch and thinking about some of the works I've really enjoyed, I wonder if I should leave off an ending to diluvium. And if I do, how much should I leave up to chance? I picture myself printing off and hanging all the poems (I'm writing them as 11" by 17" pages in an image-editing program), then setting fire to the latter half and telling someone outside the room to put it out. It takes some of the power away from me. That's appealing.

Bad Videogame Cover Art & My First Spammer

Well, boys and girls, apparently posting about the RNC CD debacle got me my first spammer. Congratulations to Jackpot - your comment has been deleted.

---

I sent this link to my friend Jeremy once upon a time. The whole series of bad videogame cover art posts from 1UP.com is pretty funny, but this bit in particular made us laugh aloud. First, the cover for Cowboy Kid:


And then part of the commentary from Scott Sharkey:

I hate pointing out when things look gay -- but, yeah, this looks pretty gay. Not the unacceptable "gay as a synonym for bad" kind of gay. I mean that the men pictured here are having sex with each other. They're the gayest gays that ever gayed a gay. And that's all right. Totally acceptable. It's a lifestyle choice that should in no way impede them in their pursuit of careers in the fields of moustache-having and being-a-racial-stereotype.

In a field that is too often filled with "that's so gay," I love seeing an piece of writing that hits so smartly. First, it sets you up to think it'll be the typical "oh noes teh ghey" kind of post. Then it steps back to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable uses of the term. Which leaves you, momentarily, in a bit of a conundrum - is he still going to attack homosexuality? Then you get the verbal hilarity of "gayest gays that ever gayed a gay." Note that we're still up in the air over whether or not this is going to be homophobic or not. And then he manages to wrap up with the crack about being-a-racial-stereotype, which reveals the whole item to be not only progressive, but aware on several sociopolitical levels. All in a one-paragraph mockery of a videogame box cover.

From the Requests #1: Run, RNC

In my Breadcrumbs post, I'd asked for readers to request topics. The first one was on a political note - Dan wonders if I could weigh in on the CD sent out by the RNC chair, and in particular on the song "Barack the Magic Negro," first featured on Rush Limbaugh's show back in 2007.

I think the initial response is best expressed by my friend Elizabeth on her blog.

In his request, Dan wonders how I think people view "this":

Humor? A puppet who when his string is pulled says "yes massa"? A pipe toking tongue and cheek poke at puff the magic dragon? Or commentary on how Barack will run the country...

The problem is figuring out A) who is "people" and B) what is "this".

Let's start with the latter. The most immediate "this" is the outcry over the release of the CD and particular songs. A step back from that is the song in the context of this post-election time period. A step back from that is the release of the CD itself. A step back from that is the song in its original context.

People could mean way too much, so let's break this down into three potential groups. On the one end, there's the folks who released the CD. In the middle are people to whom the CD was given. On the other end is everybody else.

Here's problem number one. I disagree with Rush Limbaugh on just about everything, but the tack he took in his original broadcast was at least an attempt at logic. Him singing "Barack the Magic Negro" was a small part of a larger...I can't call it a conversation...diatribe on the term "Magic Negro" as it had been used in an L.A. Times article. There's a lot of good stuff here - good as in worthy of debate - but it's not what people are getting in a huff about.

Here's problem number two. People are reacting to the term "Negro" which in popular, nonironic usage, is offensive. There are some great examples of reclaiming the term (related to reclamations of "nigger") like Saul Williams's invented etymology: "Negro: after necro, meaning death. I overcame it, so they named me after it." I might be off on a word or two there, but you get the general idea. It's also slightly beside the point. This was not put out there as a positive "negro." Were the song sung to the tune of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," we might actually have something. A president-elect who hadn't been allowed to play with the other reindeer before but now guides the sleigh? Everything changes. But again, not really the point.

The point is that somewhere between problem one and two, the nuances got stripped out. The RNC released the CD as a cheap joke, NOT as part of an effort to spark discussion on the concept of "magic negroes." The CD intentionally cashes in on the words "magic negro" out of context. So yes, I think the CD was put out there for all three reasons Dan suggests. When Rush originally sang it? Not so much. But this release of the same song, stripped of its original context? That's the mistake (in all senses of the word).

A Living Community

I'm noticing that in the conversations over at C. Dale Young's and Seth Abramson's and Barbara Reyes's blogs (among others) just about everybody is bypassing the issue I raised of open mics. I don't mean this comment to be snarky or suggest that the defenders of MFAs or museums aren't also defending valuable institutions. But really, you want to find a place where people get together and find poetry relevant, you want to find a place where it's not just about this or that type of poetry, you go to an open mic.

I realize that all open mics are going to differ. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, because a good open mic should reflect its locality. I'm going to take this post to reveal a few things about Mic Check, however, that might shed light on why I'm such a supporter of the open mic format.

There are two rules of Mic Check, voiced at the beginning of each show. One: Audience, respect the poets. That means being reasonably quiet during a reading or recital or performance, but reaction is encouraged. Clap, stamp, snap, give an amen, whatever. If you don't like a poem, write something and come back next week. Two: Poets, respect the audience. Over the course of the years, that message has come with a single addendum: No poems about sex with your zombie grandmother. This is partly tongue-in-cheek, a way of saying that even though you should know better than to berate the audience or say something so taboo as to warrant arrest for it, you will not be censored. It's also real - the grossest poem ever read at Mic Check was about a guy having sex with his grandmother's corpse. More importantly, it wasn't even good.

The type and quality of poems at Mic Check varies wildly from week to week, and even over the course of an evening. You'll hear poems that draw their rhythms from hip-hop, from Victorian poetry, from storytelling. Some of the poets study. Some come off the street. There's at least one guy who, when off his meds, talks like Christine Hume writes. That's not meant to denigrate either - it's damn impressive. I've heard performances that were less poetry than evangelism, less verse than essay on the value of Marx. I've heard poetry to which I responded viscerally and immediately. I've even heard poetry such that I went up to the poet and suggested journals to which it should be submitted.

We play games. Paper will get passed out to the crowd, and during a break between poets random members of the audience will have to write a haiku or limerick or quatrain. Sometimes the games will involve multiple people writing a single poem. This is a huge part of Mic Check, there from the beginning. It's not just about listening to the poetry, but participating in it. Bringing the community into the verse, which in turn helps to ensure the poets work with, not at, the community.

The final game each night is adlib. Anyone who wants to can come to the stage. The host or hosts get four to five words from the audience, and everybody improvs. Some will freestyle, some will create surreal stories, some will try to incorporate the words into dirty jokes. But everything wraps up with the line between audience and poets blurred, symbiotic.

That's a living community of poetry.

Breadcrumbs

A pair of nearing-end-of-year requests:

1) If you read this blog regularly, either checking in from time to time or using the RSS feed, would you be so kind as to follow it? Follow is a specific Blogger activity. There's a widget over on the right side of the page that lets you "follow" this thing. You can do so anonymously, but it'll help give me an idea how many people are actually tuning in. That's the minor request, as it merely relates to my ego.

2) Several people have called or emailed me with requests for posting topics. Looking at my labels, it would appear that I post on poetry, visual art, and video games most often. Anything specific under those categories you want to see? Any new areas? This is a more major request. It's not like I've run out of things to blog about, and in fact may blog more regularly in the coming year, but part of the point of a blog is interactivity. It's not just a series of essays or me blathering onto the internet. The larger discussions of late are encouraging. Try me :-)

A Manuscript of Publishable Quality?

There's a smart discussion (although at times the participants find themselves talking past each other, this a result of living in different paradigms) regarding the relevance of poetry taking place on several blogs at the moment. The portion I've caught is primarily on C. Dale Young's Avoiding the Muse.

Seth Abramson weighs in a number of times, but it's this post that got me thinking in a tangential direction. To keep everything on this page for the moment, here are the particular items that spark my own post:

Graduate creative writing programs graduate well over 2,000 individuals per year, with that number rising sufficiently for us to expect well over 25,000 new CW graduates over the next ten years--approximately 12,000 of them poets, each with 2-4 years of graduate training in creative writing and a manuscript of publishable quality.

and

Poetry can undoubtedly survive without MFAs; I was actually looking at it in the other direction, which is to ask the question, "What can we do with MFAs?"

Here's my question, which is related to the issue of relevancy: What exactly do we mean by manuscript of publishable quality? And is that really what we want of an MFA program?

To lay this all out, less as an argument than as a line of thought I haven't really seen pursued: A manuscript of publishable quality means one of the many, many presses out there is willing to either A) do a lot of work to make this volume sell, which means painting it as somehow relevant to a particular reading demographic, B) go into debt in order to produce the volume, knowing that poetry doesn't sell particularly well but thinking these poems worthy for some reason, or C) collect entry fees in a contest to offset the fact that the book itself will not sell well. Notice how B and especially C assume ahead of time that the poetry is not relevant, at least not to the point that economics back it up. That may be because I've weighted the options with my own verbiage, but part of the point here is in fact to weight things the "wrong" way.

Most MFA programs of which I'm aware want a poet to produce a collection of poetry by the end of his or her tenure. Said collection should fit one or more of the criteria above, which also tends to include publishing in journals, which are considered more ephemeral. But let's be honest - most of the books, despite their seeming permanence, will not last to the end of a calendar year. Now, you, dear reader, might rightly say that that's what reviews and best-of lists are for. Determining the best published books of the year. And yet the best book of the year almost certainly will not come from an MFA student, at least judging by the major awards.

I can nearly hear you clamoring for an alternative, so here goes: instead of a book-length collection of poems, produce one poem that will be worthy of reading 50 years from now.

Like I said, this isn't so much an argument as something to mull over (and probably reject in the end). But really, if we are asking an MFA student to show mastery of a subject, which in this case is the writing of poetry, why would we accept a lot of work that is good versus a small body of work that is masterful? Certainly encourage the students to publish in journals, which are passing, and acknowledge that most of what they do will fall by the wayside. Simultaneously encourage them to produce something that won't just get blurbed, won't just break even, but will be relevant (by which I mean, problematically, either splendidly indicative of that student's time/place/situation or splendidly counter to it, which would both be of value to the reader 50 years from now, or somehow transcending time and space to speak to that unknown yet anticipated reader). If the student can manage to produce a poetic sequence or, miracle of miracles, an entire book that fits this criterion, you'll know you have something really special on your hands.

Thoughts? C. Dale? Seth? Nancy? Barbara Jane? Regular readers of this blog? Really, I'm not wedded to the concept, and I'm not trying to call Seth out or anything silly like that, but I feel like a discussion around its problems could be useful in defining why an MFA and its productions are in fact relevant.

Implications of Sky and other posts

We have power again, just no hot water. Don't ask. There are people in far worse condition, so I'm not complaining. Had ideas for several blog posts / interesting moments over the few days without internet access, which I recap (but do not reprint in full) now:

---

"In Absentia" was released on Indiefeed's Performance Poetry podcast this morning. Nice timing. And a nice outro by Mongo. :-)

I need to start putting together a set list for the shows I'm giving next year. New pieces to add to the lineup present on Arts & Crafts: "A priest, a minister, and a rabbi," "Mabel's Cards" (improv structure), "Why [name of other poet] is going home with somebody tonight and I'm not," "The Magician and the Mice," "M.B.F.T.M.I.W.O.K.T.T.T.P (My Black Friend Told Me It Was OK To Tell This Poem)" (for Crystal), and "Shirts and Skins." Perhaps a few others.

---

An old man in a wheelchair trying to remain relevant.

---

Kate saying "garbanzicide" in reference to eating a tasty bean dish.

---

I'm fascinated by the differences between evergreen trees covered in snow and in ice.

Snow carries with it implications of sky, as though the trees might shake themselves off like dogs and the flakes fly upwards. Despite collecting in piles, snow is individualized, faceted, like diamond(s). You know it's cold, but it is also soft. Snow gives.

When a tree glazes over with ice, all things point downwards. The weight is not like snow, which can be divested. It is a permanence even though we know it will also melt. It is singular, unceasing. Because it is so much like liquid water, there is the fearful sense that if we touch one of the branches, we too would be pulled inside. Ice takes - see the sunlight it amplifies and runs along a branch?

---

I don't think about the dark in the dark. I'm thinking about what things would look like if they could be seen, or what they feel like regardless, or what they sound like. The dark is not quite a blank slate for my impressions - but when it is present, I'm trying to move beyond it. On the other hand, when the heat shuts off, as it did, cold is present. Cold cannot be negotiated with, only held back by blankets other warm bodies. When I try to find something that is not-cold, it isn't like my search for not-dark. It is a struggle against an active rather than passive adversary.

A good night for poetry

Maybe not Poetry, but poetry :-)

Mic Check was a lot of fun. Six or seven first-time readers, which is always a wonderful thing to see. Crystal, Lisa, and Adrienne all read stuff (poems or otherwise) because it was my last night. Kathleen, who I haven't seen in ages, showed up with a friend to watch and ended up reading an Auden poem. Meghan, who signed Kathleen up, read another Auden poem. Brittany brought a friend. So it was a general (but contained) grouping of friends and former students and colleagues (some of these people fall into multiple categories) to see me off. I like not making a huge goodbye. Of course, when I return in April, a standing-room only crowd would be great...

Also received word that I came in 2nd in the Bookhabit competition, to the tune of $250. Also also received word that I won the People's Performance Choice award, to the tune of $500. Thank you to everybody who voted. Seriously. I bought drinks for anyone who read a poem tonight. If you're around in April and you voted, we'll talk about a similar deal.

Next time I blog, it will be from New Hampshire. Until then...

Badass Typographic Illustrations

typographic illustration. Animated typography. Pairs a musician and a font to create portraits using song lyrics.

Bembo's Zoo. Animated typography. Forms animals out of the letters of their names. Thanks to Amy Earhart for this one.

Caroline Epp's Think Art Make Art. Static typography. Examples of student work.

Various examples in this blog post by Fran Payne.

Arts & Crafts now available

Arts & Crafts is now available for download at my website: www.jeffstumpo.com/stage.html.

There are two missing files - the video essay "Collaboration" will be uploaded this weekend. Tim Weaver's version of "ADD TV" will follow whenever he's done with it.

Please feel free to share this with anyone - email, torrent, put on CD, whatever. It's a free album.

Why free? Because I can, because I think I ought to, and because it will help me get exposure.

As a graduate student, I have access to free recording equipment, though I myself am not a great videographer (you'll easily be able to tell who did professional recording and when I just set up a camera myself). That means that it cost me nothing but time to put this album together. Jeff Morris, Danny Yeager, and Janet McCann helped out with recording equipment/space. Tim Weaver videoed the Bryan slam team at NPS2007, and Poetry Slam, Inc. allowed me to use that footage gratis. My friend Carl is hosting the files on his website, which is a huge bonus. Buck, Byron, Stephen, Travis, and Logen all let me use their likenesses/voices for free. With all that in mind, I'm able to put these recordings on the web for "nothing."

I'm not releasing this album to make myself out to be an expert in performance poetry, but I do want to help explain a few things about the genre. Based on the fact that "ADD TV" and "There will be no reinvention of the wheel" are being taught in university classrooms, I can (without a great deal of vanity) say that I've done a few things right. I want to unbox those for curious poets and people interested in poetry. It's a happy obligation.

The last reason is not entirely cynical. I haven't been a touring poet. I don't have great exposure on the national scene, except as part of the Bryan team in 2007 and for a foray into the top 10 in Famecast.com's poetry contest a while back. I would love to get more gigs, especially at universities. I'm far more interesting in person than on video, and I can work a classroom as well as a stage. If you're a student and you like what you see and hear, press your professors to bring me in. I'm not that expensive anyway :-)

---

If you like "ADD TV" and are willing, drop by www.bookhabit.com, register, and vote for that poem before December 7. If I'm at the top of the stack by the end of that day, it'll be $500 in my pocket.

---

For those of you near Bryan-College Station, this Sunday will be my last Mic Check. I'll be back in April (I'm teaching a two-day workshop in performance at the Poetry at Round Top Festival - think about registering), but this will be the last time I perform in a while. Nothing fancy, but it's as close as I'll get to a send-off.

Useful links for beginning submitters

For friends just beginning to submit to literary journals:

1. Duotrope collects response times, submission requirements, and all that good information in one place for you.

2. Jeffrey Bahr's table ranks literary journals by how hard they are to get into. Note that this is not the same as saying how good they are, but others will generally accord more prestige to the 9s through 6/7s on this list than the 5s through 1s (in case you don't get it, due to stress over just starting to submit, the top-ranked journal, the Futility Review, is a gag).

3. Newpages gives slightly more in-depth (1-2 paragraphs) reviews of the journals. Qualitative as opposed to the quantitative approach of the previously mentioned sites.

Time / Lapse

I recently uploaded a number of old photos to Facebook. Knowing that some of you who read this blog do not have (nor want) (nor do I blame you for not wanting) access to Facebook, I'm putting up a few themed photos here. I'll let them speak for themselves unless somebody has a question, with one exception - none of these are digitally manipulated to create the main effect. That is to say, when I scanned in the photos, I used Photoshop or GIMP to restore the original color balance if at all possible. But the primary effects - the multiple instances of a single person, the smearing, all of those things that look like "special effects" - were done solely through the use of an open shutter and creative use of lighting.

Time / Lapse

Mind the Gap

State of Mind

What Big Eyes You Have

Born Slippy

Breaking Free

ifrit

Pentacostal

2 male artists you need to check out now (and 2 to watch for in the future)

Already Made It

1. Jason Salavon

Salavon creates digital collages and alterations that are both aesthetically pleasing to mainstream viewers and utterly postmodern in the messages they send.

Here's a piece from Every Playboy Centerfold: The Decades. This image is the mean average of every centerfold image of the 80s. The production is most striking when you view the entire series and watch the skin and hair grow lighter, the abstracted body grow thinner.



Salavon's work is wide-ranging in its techniques and messages, so go check out the main site.

2. James Jean

Jean is perhaps best-known for being a comic book cover artist, particular for his work on Fables, for which he's won a number of Eisner Awards. His non-comic art is just as thought-provoking, drawing on various cultures for inspiration and producing images that are often soothing and creepy, childlike and suggestive of hidden knowledge.



Definitely look into purchasing the new hardcover collection of all his Fables covers.

Keep Your Eye On

1. Ivan Farr

I met Ivan at Cushing Library at A&M. He's doing interesting work in a variety of artistic areas: photography, architecture, sculpture. Here's a photograph of his that I own (a large, framed print, at any rate).



There's a great diversity of material on his website. Check it out.

2. Tim Weaver

Tim is turning my poem "ADD TV" into an installation piece. The project has gone through perhaps five iterations, each one a fascinating idea. The latest I heard from him was a sculpture onto which he would project the various characters in "ADD TV" all at once (we recorded footage wherein I performed the poem as normal, then went back and did the entire thing as each character - pretty hilarious at times). The audience can walk around the piece to get different perspectives, thus gaining some power to "change the channel." He was blogging his progress for a while, but things seem to have disappeared. I'll update this post if I can find out where he's hosting video of his multimedia work now...

I'd like $500

The usual response to a statement like that is something along the lines of "And I want a solid-gold toilet." In this particular instance, however, you really can help me get $500.

Go to www.bookhabit.com. Register. Go to the competition page, and vote for my poem "ADD TV." There are judges who will award prizes based on the poetry, but there is also a prize for best performance. That prize is decided by users' votes.

For those of you reading regularly, that means that I did make it into the final round of the competition. Thanks for the votes that helped put me here :-)

For my friends at Halo tonight

Bacchae

we drive by a small town with no graveyard and people
so crackly-old they must have forgotten to die

we picnic by the side of the road
and corn husks
mutilated by ants
litter the ground
tattered as poor ghosts

expecting farmers
we instead find dancers
bloody as newborns
spinning in the fields
leaving little hoofprints in the soil

and knowing that the old people do not die
and knowing ghosts are poor
and knowing that the hoofprints are very small indeed

we begin to dance

---

That poem was published in Karamu back in 2004, but tonight it's for my friends (who are probably still) dancing at Halo in downtown Bryan.

---

Man, I just looked at the Karamu website, which hasn't been updated since 2003. Bad site, good journal. Stick to the poem.

Got to Buy It, I've Got to Buy It

During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I interned at an advertising firm in Chicago. Cool job. My first task on my first day was to accompany my boss to a Toys 'R Us, where we purchased a bunch of Star Wars action figures. The firm in question was in charge of several major accounts, including Taco Bell, which at the time was doing tie-ins with Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (aka steaming pile of fanbase betrayal).

I learned a lot during that summer. Most importantly, I discovered that I was a writer who liked history, not a historian who liked to write. Other, less personally important discoveries:

-Sears likes to ask for innovation and then shoot down anything approaching it. "We want to do something different for Mother's Day next year." OK, how about we do a special mom-friendly event where anybody who comes in with a baby receives a free manicure or pedicure, bring in storytellers or magicians to entertain kids so that they don't bother her while shopping, do generational coupons that stack if mom and grandma come in together... "Wait, no, nevermind, let's just put on a sale. And emphasize how much everybody loves mom. Use words like 'Sears Loves Moms.' And maybe use ducks instead of flowers this time."

-Jim Beam started a campaign that was hilarious. It centered on being one of the guys. I was particularly fond of one copywriter's contribution: "They eat your food, sleep on your couch, and now they want your sister." It was silly, poking fun at what it meant to be a guy rather than trying to say "real men drink Jim Beam." I was sorely disappointed to see that same campaign, years later, taking a misogynistic turn (this example is from Australia, but I've seen similar stuff in magazine ads in the US). Sigh.

-The Blair Witch Project is actually scary as hell when you watch it on a bootleg VHS tape that somebody in the firm got from a friend who was involved with the project. In the theaters? Laughable. But popping in a scratchy version and sitting in your basement to view it? Totally in line with the artistic vision of the filmmakers.

-Fads are powerful. Everybody wanted a piece of Pokemon. Sears (though it ended up rejecting any good ideas we came up with). Various other retailers. Fast food joints. Pokemon pokemon pokemon. This should have happened even back then.

Bonus points for anybody who gets the reference in the title of this post.

ENGL235 - here are some stories

http://www.corpse.org/content/view/195/33/

http://failbetter.com/26/PovermanLove.php?sexnSrc=RecentFiction

http://www.anotherchicagomagazine.org/docs/Shelton%20-%20Consumption.pdf

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n2/fiction/mccorkle_j/going_shoes.htm

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/callaloo/v029/29.2clarke.html

Facebook Conundrum and Sensations

They finally got me to join Facebook. By "they" I mean what appears to be the rest of the Western world (despite working on my PhD and the ostensibly theoretical tone of the following post, I refuse to argue semantics related to "The Western World" this evening).

Facebook scares me a bit. Partly because technology hates me. Partly because it's a data (not information) overload.

More importantly, I'm ambivalent as to what my Facebook presence ought to be.

As an instructor, I don't want to give my students access to my profile/pages. I'm informal in the classroom, but there's an appropriate distance to keep. Asking "Will you be my friend" does weird things to that distance. Former students - some more than others - can be OK. But anybody from less than a semester ago... I just think it's a bad idea to blur these lines more than necessary.

On the other hand, as a performer, I want to be as close to as many potential listeners as possible. That's what many performing/slamming poets do - use Facebook or MySpace to keep track of fans all over the place. It's exceptionally convenient for this purpose - I can advertise upcoming gigs, converse, release tracks, post photos, all somewhat easier than updating my website. And this closeness/ease runs right into the face of the previous desire.

Sometimes my students are also my audience. I don't perform in the classroom the same way I perform on stage, but sometimes a student (or group) will see me at the local open mic, or find video of me online. This sometimes results in said student(s) wanting to find out more. Great - but on what side of the line should I fall?

Still figuring this one out.

---

Sensations I've had in the last couple of days - and by sensations I mean images I've seen in my waking hours as though suddenly remembering them - sort of as if a memory ran concurrently with itself - not dreams:

Being in a cube with open sides and gray bars (unknown/unimportant material) for edges. I am facing somewhat to the right, because an edge is directly in front of me. The cube sudden droops on the left-hand side, and I move my arms to balance. The entire time, I'm watching myself from slightly above and to the right.

Gathering wet sand into a short and wide cone, then pushing the cone away from myself.

The road goes on forever, but there are driveways every fifty feet.

deer pausing

I think this image may be closer to what I wanted to write in the poem just posted...

while walking Gollum

at dusk, eight deer
flit across the road
one after another
and silent

the last one pauses,
stares at me walking
as though I were the ghost
in this place

Three Kinds of Braggadocio

Ron Mohring over at Seven Kitchens Press has given the go-ahead: The Icarus Sketches will appear in 2009 as the third chapbook in that press's Editor's Series. You can see the forthcomingness over in their sidebar.

I recently received two of 7KP's chapbooks - Underground Singing by Harry Humes and Still by Deborah Burnham - and the production value was quite good. I have Icarus poems out at various journals, and some have already been published. We'll see how nice I can make the acknowledgments page look by mid-2009 ;-)

---

In related news, I finally have time to hunker down and work on diluvium. The recent feature on visual poetry in Poetry is heartening. I also think of the wonderful job Jessica Smith is doing to bring visual poetry out into the light. On the other hand, I have doubts any of the pages in diluvium will appear in a journal. It's just going to be too dependent on sequentiality and linking pages.

If I haven't talked to you about it recently, think of the love-child of Ed Dorn's Languedoc Variorum and Steve McCaffery's Carnival, and that's what I'm trying to do stylistically. Pair the two types of poetry that most depend on a burst of energy/imagery - that is, visual and lyric - and then extend them into an 80+ page poetic sequence.

---

If you've been reading, you'll recall a previous post about me trying to freestyle. Well, I really liked the bit about boomerangs and elephant pelvises, and every once in a while I think of something that flows. I think this is going to turn into some kind of mock epic. Or mock rap epic. Or rap mock epic. Or epic rap mockery. Or something. Tentative title is "Attack of the 50 Foot Ideologies." These lines presumably will belong in the middle somewhere:

"From an elephant's pelvis I
fashioned a boomerang
that laid to waste and raised up cities
Then he came at me with a shank

shaved from an obelisk
stolen from Egypt
screaming, "I'm an objectivist!"
But I left his penis in pieces-

deflecting it with a shield
made out of Beowulf's contradictions
all the while replying, "Syncretism
derives energy from convictions' frictions."

Yeah, I get carried away. Sound does that. Haven't yet decided whether to choke it back a bit. It's a hell of a lot of fun to say out loud, let me tell you. I actually picture the line breaks somewhere else, incidentally, but there's a definite four-line rhyme box - I like carrying the energy from a set of rhymes into a new set of images.

A Less-Important Vote

Not as important as these.

So I did join the contest over at Bookhabit.com. This is definitely not a FameCast situation, and I'm not going to self-promote the way I did during that competition*. However, I'd appreciate it if any of you regular readers would swing over to the competition page, register (you won't get spammed the way FameCast did, but you will get emails from time to time regarding the contest), and use at least some of your points on "ADD TV." Tell your friends if you want. Don't tell them if you don't want.

There are a total of three rounds. I already made it through the first. Getting through the second round depends on user votes - each user gets 50 points to distribute among the entries (all points can go to a single poem, of course). The third round is given over to official poetry judges in New Zealand, though there is a "viewer's choice" kind of award for best performance.

If you do vote, please make it legit. Don't create multiple accounts. Don't do anything to artificially boost my score. Use your real name and an email address you actually check so that if there is a vote audit, yours doesn't get eliminated.

Thanks :-)

*admittedly, I came in 10th out of about 80 poets, including Taylor Mali, Big Poppa E, Andrea Gibson, and other major slammers, in Season Two of FameCast, but it was way too stressful for way too little payoff.

Captains' Log

OK, I'm late in posting. Cable company hooked up internet yesterday, but I had to wrestle with the wireless router for ~3 hours to get it to work. Much better things to do in the new house, but Kate can take care of most of it while I'm back in Texas. Geekery is apparently on my side of our division of labor (along with doing the dishes and vacuuming).

Kate will post photos of the trip online at some point. While the landscapes get increasingly beautiful, the photos become fewer as Apple got more and more afraid of the camera. Don't ask - you just don't want to spend hours in a car with a dog who freaks and tries to hide whenever you pull out the digital camera.

In the meantime, and perhaps of more interest to some of you (hi, Julie!), here are selections from the journal we kept on the road. Anytime there's a long pause between entries, you can reasonably assume we were talking politics or religions or just laughing too much to record what made us laugh.

h = hour
m = minute

DAY ONE

m1 I feel pretty good about this

m2 Who farted?

m3 Stubby is licking the atlas. The world tastes good.

m5 Cacophonous birds

m8 Anti-fog wipes, my ass!

m9 Who farted?

m49 What smell is the equivalent of a sunrise?

m53 We decide that our dogs would vote Libertarian: "I caught the squirrel. Don't take my squirrel, Government. I earned that squirrel."

h1m52 A poem for Gabe Gudding, to Apple: "My balls are not an ocean and you are not a boat"

h1m56 Billboard: "Sheriff / TOMMY THOMAS / for Sheriff"

h2m40 I thought you said his name was Otter Bots

h4m57 Bubba Oustalet

h629m JeFF tries to tell Kate she can't write "Guess what, mutt butt?" but she thwarts him. Although he won't know until he reads this later.

h7m30 Baptist Pumpkin Center

h7m33 JeFF: He's hanging on with his forelimbs
Kate: Four limbs?
JeFF: With an E
Kate: Limbeez?

h10m17 Fuzzy butt bumpkins butt bum bum bump bum

h12m30 Garmin: Continue 120 miles.
Kate: Screw you, Garmin!

DAY TWO

m45 Road names that sound like bad pornos: Beaver Ruin

h1m45 "Dad's Restaurant / Voted Best Burger / 100% Cow"

h2m3 Musical options: 9 stations praising Jesus, "I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee," something bluegrassy about a monkey who steals a locomotive, or death metal

h3m55 Apple starts to lick one foot, while the other sneaks up on her and starts to scratch her ear. She looks at it grumpily, since it didn't have permission to scratch.

h5m3 The tree is saying, "Pcchhkk, I am Yellow"

h7m9 Apparently "Drill here Drill now" is a national meme

h7m46 JeFF: It's Roger Thomas, Jr.!
Kate: Who?
JeFF: The guy in the low-rider with flames.
Kate: He has his name on his car?
JeFF: Yeah.
Kate: Who's Roger Thomas, Jr.?
JeFF: The guy in a low-rider with flames!

h8m15-30 MAINT REQD. Owner's manual near-useless.

DAY THREE

m9 Mistaking God for coal

m16 eat the egg not my finger!

m57 Passing Frackville, PA...want to go buy and smash a toaster...

Side note: Penn State road symbol. Mason? Keystone?

h4m44 "Eve was framed" bumper sticker

h6m33 Apple licking cardboard box. Stubby licking cell phones and sun visor. Either very hungry or have lost fragile little minds during long trip

hWHOTHEHELLKNOWS New Home

Coming Soon

Photos of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and however far we get today. I was going to post them last night upon arriving at my brother's house in Georgia, but a 14 hour trip turned into a 16 hour trip thanks to an accident just outside of Montgomery. Add in the loss of an hour upon reaching the Eastern Time Zone, and I was too tired. Now I don't have enough time. Hopefully you'll get something more substantive from me tonight.

Kate and I have been keeping a journal of punch-drunk car-trip sayings. I'll get some of those up at the very least. It won't be any Rhode Island Notebook (I'll fill in a hyperlink on that later for those of you who don't want to Google it), but might prove amusing.

Everybody Go Read This Now

I'm supposed to be on the final 1% of getting ready to move. Kate to New Hampshire, me to New Hampshire then back down here until the end of the semester.

Then I find Blotchmen.

Everybody, and by everybody I mean every single one of you even vaguely-geeky students of literature out there, go read it.

Rexroth by Unicorn

This is just a really nice-looking book of poetry. It's the trade edition of Kenneth Rexroth's Sky Sea Birds Trees Earth House Beasts Flowers, published by Unicorn Press (founded and run by my friend Al Brilliant). The photos aren't spectacular, but you should look up Al if you're ever in Greensboro (you can find him as the owner of the Community Book Shop) to get your own copy.

Too Much Packing!

How to Use Irony, and Lots of It, in a Title

From blognigger.com: "Dyslexic Negro Cryptographer Lightly Etches Code Into McCain Volunteer's Face While She Remains Perfectly Still"...

---

In unrelated news, my dissertation proposal has moved one step closer to approval.

In related-to-that news, the dissertation itself is progressing nicely.

---

In news that is somehow related to something, head over to The Splinter Generation, where my poem "The garbage man will make it all all right" is one of the pieces representing my fractured 15-35 year old demographic.

The poem is dedicated to Nandra Perry. She popped into my office today to say that since the poem appeared in The Texas Observer, she's been getting contacted by people she hasn't heard from in years. Ironic poetry, bringing people together in totally random ways :-)

Smart Games, Dumb/Smart Gamers, Dumb Politics

Smart Games:

Real world definition of "mature": Showing the mental, emotional, or physical characteristics associated with a fully developed person; involving serious thought.

Videogame definition of "mature":
Shits, tits and gibs.

What is adult? According to ratings boards and hand-wringing politicians, the only qualifications necessary are a bucket of blood, a stream of foul profanity and a parade of naughty lady parts. Ironically, the very things that are included to win over immature teenage boys.

The following games, however, define adult in a different way. They tackle challenging themes, explore intellectual ideas and deal with complex characters in complicated relationships. They add shades of grey to an otherwise black-and-white form of entertainment.

---

Smart Game, Smart/Dumb Gamers

Yesterday we received an email in tips from Nsider on behalf of True-Gaming.net that was sent to Media Molecule and Sony regarding the Qu'ran passages in LittleBigPlanet's music that resulted in the worldwide recall of the title just a week before release. the email explains the passages and goes on to request that they be removed from the title.

In case you don't pick up on it, the gamers writing comments to the effect that this is not censorship are the smart ones.

---

Dumb Politics

I try to not weigh in on politics on this blog. I have various reasons, not least of which is my position as an instructor. For better or worse, I help my students to define/redefine/develop their own political position, even when I stringently disagree with those positions. I get a certain amount of enjoyment from reaching the end of a semester and getting student feedback that says my politics were evident, then seeing very different politics named by different people.

This particular moment is getting to me, however. It's the William Ayers issue, specifically the Right's attempt to connect Obama to Ayers. Now, my problem isn't even the mudslinging aspect of this game. I've read editorials and political pamphlets going back to the founding of the country, and if you think this kind of shit hasn't been around since Washington's reelection, you're kidding yourself. Actually, they were even meaner back then.

No, my problem is the ideological and military implications of casting Ayers as a terrorist. If that's the case, it means that even though he's now a professor, hasn't bombed anything in years, and lives a fairly quiet (if still politically active) life, he's still a terrorist. Which in turn means that terrorists can't change. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist. Which means the only thing we can do is kill them. We can't reeducate them, can't win their hearts and minds, can't convince them they were wrong or even misguided. At best we can turn their attention to someone they hate more than us. But more likely, we'll just have to fight until one or the other is dead.

That position is neither Right nor Left. It's just scary.

Mic Check Presents: Stephen Sargent

Yes, at last, I give you video of Steve. Take heart, dear readers, for this is not just video of Steve's last performance at Mic Check, but 25 minutes of Steve's last performance at Mic Check. I had to let the video render overnight; that's how much Steve you're getting.

It's all in one file and may take a bit to buffer. This is partly because I'm pressed for time lately, and breaking the video out into six or seven segments would have increased my workload by, well, six- or seven-fold. It's also because Steve, like most features, does a little banter and explanation between poems, and I figured that I should leave that in, this being his last performance and all.

Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Dreams vs. TV: Which Says More About Me?

My dream last night (not incidentally, this is one of the most "normal" and least-frightening dreams I've ever had):

I'm teaching an Intro to Composition course in an auditorium-style room. Maybe a hundred students but still plenty of empty chairs. It's the first day of class, so I go through the syllabus, do a few theatrical flourishes to get them interested in sticking out the semester, and everything works. Students cheering and clapping. Then I look around and see a number of faculty from the English Department in the crowd. They're scowling. I realize that I haven't mixed the acid and water yet - there are 5 gallon jugs of hydrochloric acid and similar jugs of water over on the side of the room. So I'm standing there with a jug in each hand (apparently I was Superman in this dream) but am unable to remember whether you add the acid to the water or vice versa. This goes on for several very uncomfortable minutes, and then I wake up.

---

Five favorite TV shows:

1. Looney Tunes*
2. Monty Python's Flying Circus
3. Deadwood
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer**
5. Battlestar Galactica (new version)***

*If Looney Tunes doesn't count as a show, per se, shift everything up and add Gilmore Girls in the number five spot.

**Can I squeak Angel into this same space?

***I reserve the right to change this based on what happens in the last half of the last season.

Wooden Boys and Deadlier Toys

OK boys and girls, here's the spiel that you shouldn't get from your poet.

This is not a finished poem, but I performed it anyway. I'm not sure how to finish it, because I'm not sure what it's about. I know what started it, and what writing it was about. It was the conjunction of my former slam teammate Byron once telling me I was monotone in my performances, reading an article about Heath Ledger preparing for his role as the Joker by studying ventriloquists' dummies (the way their voices are disembodied), and a line in Fables #36 (one of the best covers for that comic, incidentally) that references what Little Boy Blue is carrying in the Witching Cloak ("wooden boys" referring to Pinocchio's body and "deadlier toys" referring to the Vorpal Sword).

So yeah, all those elements combined to create this piece, which doesn't have anything to do with the Vorpal Sword but lots to do with Pinocchio, which has a lot to do with ventriloquism but nothing to do with the Joker, and for me has to do with what you sacrifice for your art. I don't think that any of that comes through, nor do I expect an audience to get those things from it. The words have to change, but I'll meditate on it all for a while. In the meantime, apparently it is just damn creepy.

Wooden Boys and Deadlier Toys

You may now address mail to Dr. and Mr. Stumpo

:-)

These are (some of) the Happy Stories

Kate defends her dissertation today. That's happy. That's very happy. Incidentally, for those of you keeping score as to who is smarter/wears the pants/whatever in this relationship, the title of her dissertation is FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES OF GOLD NANOPARTICLE MATRICES FOR LASER DESORPTION/IONIZATION MASS SPECTROMETRY
. It isn't actually all bold-face and majuscule and whatnot, but a title like this really sort of implies such typography.

--

I promised happy anecdotes/stories related to teaching to balance out the sad stories from yesterday. Here goes:

At BJHS, one of the activities that led to friction between myself and the program director was the following - I told my class to imagine themselves a few years down the road, sitting in a bar, when one of the patrons loudly says "Those stupid spics can't do shit." How do they react? The first response was to kick the guy's ass. The class was somewhat surprised when I actually wrote that on the board. Further responses were to go talk to him and to prove him wrong. I asked what would happen if we did in fact go beat the guy down. A couple of people noted that the 11 o'clock news would just show another nonwhite person from the South Side getting arrested. OK, next option, talk to him. Much as I'd love to say that's a great idea - we're in an English class after all - we decided that the guy isn't likely to listen. Final option, prove him wrong. But how? The class was very, very quiet for a full minute or two. I finally pressed one girl directly - "Prove to me that you're not stupid." She leaned over and whispered nervously in Spanish to her friend. Very good, I said, you can speak two languages fluently. That's certainly proof. We then went around the room with each person demonstrating some undeniable skill. I don't expect that it was a life-changing moment, but each kid left that day reminded of at least one thing at his or her immediate disposal that would refute bigots.

Other moments, these all involving college students I've taught (and as opposed to the first story, examples that developed organically/without my direct intervention):

The young man whose favorite radio programs were talk shows hosted by Limbaugh and Hannity, and the young lady who, in her words, had "literally hugged a tree." Every day after our Intro to Rhetoric and Composition class, they'd go to the computer lab and spend half an hour to an hour in friendly debate and sharing of information.

The young lady whose final project for Intro to Rhet/Comp was an analysis of drug use in her small hometown. She ended up using information from that project to get an internship with the FBI, which fortuitously led to her participation in fieldwork (actual drug busts, etc), and last I heard from her, she's pursuing a graduate degree before applying to the FBI for a career position.

The 8-9 students from last Spring's Intro to Creative Writing who still hang out with each other to cook and write (and give me crap, as I deserve, from time to time via email).

Being taught some basic ASL by a deaf creative writing student and the class interpreter (this experience became my performance poem "Sign of the Turtle").

The paper casting Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree as the narrative of an abusive relationship. That same summer session (this was an Intro to Lit course), very very smart treatments of Marie de France's Guigemar and comparative linguistic analyses of The Declaration of Independence and A Declaration of the Rights of Woman. OK, I laid the basic groundwork for the papers, but left so much room available regarding the topic that there was still a huge amount of creativity in these choices. It was my first time teaching Intro to Lit, and I felt overjoyed that the "give them enough rope with which to hang themselves" approach would not fail, despite the bad rep undergraduates often have (especially among grad students).

These are the Sad Stories

Between my last post and an extended conversation over at John Galliher's blog, I'm stuck remembering sad stories. For anybody wondering how my current teaching persona and philosophy were formed, here's a partial insight. These were all students of mine at Benito Juarez High School in Chicago, where I student-taught. I didn't complete the semester. That wasn't because of the students and is another (angry, not sad) story.

I remember the names, but I'm leaving them out.

The girl who came in 15 minutes late on the first day. She was on crutches. I asked her what had happened. "I got shot." It remains the only time I've ever been in a classroom with no response (sometimes I don't voice my response, but really, what in teacher training prepares you for that moment?). I later found out she'd been in a driveby over the summer coming out of an apartment with two friends - one was still in the hospital, one died instantly.

The boy who was failing World Lit (senior level English) and asked me for a D so that he could join the Marines in the Spring.

The girl who was so proud the day she joined the Latin King Killers.

The boy who pronounced "machine" as "macheen" and caught crap for it from all his (Mexican/Mexican-American) classmates.

The boy in British Lit (junior level English) who was marked as being in special ed. I could never figure out why, since he was the smartest one in the class by far. On one of my last days there, he handed me The Trial saying, "I've read everything by Kafka, but this is my favorite because this is my life." I still have that book.

Somebody make me tell happy stories tomorrow. They exist.

Only the Names have been Changed

One of my very best friends teaches 6th grade Language Arts. He's good at it. For example, one of his former students is now a 7th grader making a B in honors English. This same student is failing all of his other courses, which range from regular to remedial. My friend is the one who managed to get this kid to give a shit about anything at all related to school.

For this and many other reasons, I'd love to name my friend here. If you ever come to Bryan-College Station, you'd want to meet him. You'd want your children to be taught by him. An incident of a month ago, however, suggests to me that I might not be able to name my friend, at least in his capacity as a teacher, on this blog.

He broke up a fight between two students, one who knew him, one who didn't. The one who knew him went limp immediately upon being dragged away, choosing to not aim a blow at the teacher as hormone-driven young men often do. The other, I'm not sure. My friend received the followup report to this incident just recently. His former student received standard in-school punishment for fighting. The other was charged with a felony for having a gun in his bag and intending to kill his opponent.

That's right - my friend, the good teacher, in breaking up a fight, might have been shot by a 7th grader if things went wrong.

This post could be about violence in schools or racism in BCS (my friend has been called a "nigger" by young black men at his school who are woefully unaware of just how sad that statement is) or any number of subjects. But for the moment, it's about how I'm afraid to print my friend's name because it might identify him as party to a felony. It's not that the other gang members will hunt him down or anything so dramatic, but that per school rules, we probably aren't allowed to know this happened.

ENGL235, here's your reading for Monday

Well, kindasorta. You've received a handout of sorts containing these readings.

Terrance Hayes - "gander," "nuclear," and "ambulance" from Hip Logic

Naomi Shihab Nye - "Half-and-Half" from fuel

Jimmy Santiago Baca - "X" from the latter half of Martin & Meditations on the South Valley

Suzanne Wise - "Autobiography" from The Kingdom of the Subjunctive

Gabriel Gudding - "Youth of the Backhoe" from A Defense of Poetry

Rita Dove - "Courtship," "Courtship, Diligence," and "Chronology" from Thomas and Beulah

The topics for Monday: Reception, Reinvention, and Tradition.

Prepping, Bookhabit,

I made some quick (literally - took me about ten minutes) changes to my website to prepare for the release of Arts & Crafts. Once this is done up properly, you should be able to stream all of the audio and video as well as download them wholesale. If you want to grab the cover art early, just right-click and Save As.

--

Anybody know if this Bookhabit.com/New Zealand Poetry Society contest is legit?

--

Yet another brief October post. There's too much real life at the moment.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow (and tomorrow)

It's October, and those of you anxiously awaiting Arts & Crafts (by the way, I'm quite flattered that some of you are actually anxiously awaiting it) will notice that it's not here yet. Thanks to the dissertation, dissertation proposal, grading, and selling the house, everything is delaying everything else. I'm also waiting on some permissions from Poetry Slam Inc to use footage from the 2007 National Poetry Slam. I'm giving that two more weeks, after which I'll just use video from one of the team practices.

To tide you over, or something, here's another piece from the album, appropriately titled "In Absentia" and dealing with the presence/absence of the author.

Wordle.net

Just discovered this site by going blog-to-blog over lunch. You enter text, Wordle.net arranges it graphically. You have some control of the distribution, font, and color scheme. The size of each word is determined by its relative frequency within the overall text. Below are three ones I did up by copying and pasting the text of the McCain-Obama debate...

First attempt, totally random:



Tried playing with color here:



Added 200 or so iterations of the word "debate" to get it prominent:

in/nuendo delicto & Watchmen (these items unrelated)

I'm up at school, responding to student work. Last time I mentioned them, it was at the beginning of the semester. I haven't taken time to note that there are some promising writers in class. Some generally-creative minds, as well. Hooray :-)

Yesterday Kate and I took a break from the insanity-that-is-our-current-schedule and watched the first couple episodes of The Tudors. At one point, the Duke of Buckingham walks in on a knight having sex with his (that is, Buckingham's) daughter (the idea that "his daughter" means "his property" plays out pretty strongly here). He later confronts King Henry VIII, saying he caught the man "in flagrante delicto." Now, we've all heard that phrase. I'm not bothering to look it up in the OED right now, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that "flagrante" is related to the modern "flagrant." In which case, I have to ask-

Is there an innuendo delicto? A subtle delicto? I mean, can you catch someone in the sex act, but they're kinda pretending that it's not happening (I'm picturing the awkwardness of co-ed dorms and roommates coming home early here)? And to the other end, can you have flagrantissimo delicto? Riding down Main Street, USA on a unicycle while making love?

---

In totally unrelated news, but posted here to avoid posting again: the Watchmen movie is on the way. I feel great trepidation, don't think the movie can in any way, shape, or form approach the movie. Shot-by-shot recreation of scenes does not necessarily mean that the film will be faithful to the comic. Potentially worse, especially for someone who likes video games, is the video game spinoff that's being worked on. With that in mind, however, there is hope.

Once upon a time, there was a game that essentially had a "Press x to think introspectively on your life" command. I'm thinking of Planescape: Torment. Not the best-selling game ever, but one of the most philosophically-complex games I've ever played. Within the first few minutes of playing, you're confronted by a quasi-Buddhist character telling you the world is illusory. Within twenty, you're given the option to convince another character that it's OK to die...because that person is losing his faith, and his religion posits death as a good thing, a passage to a better world. I really, really doubt that the the Watchmen game would try for that angle, but there's always the possibility.

Of course, then we'd end up with a comic book that pushes the boundaries of what a comic book can do, a video game that pushes the boundaries of what a video game can say/mean, and a movie that turns out to be the lesser/least product. Ironic, no?

Also, instead of a movie, an HBO/Showtime miniseries would rock. Webisodes/blog entries/etc to mirror the non-comic interludes. A multimedia experience that could (finally) capture the spirit of the original

ENGL235, here's the powerpoint of art from Wednesday

Or not, since I can't upload a PowerPoint presentation [nor Impress presentation (that's the OpenOffice version, for those of you wondering) nor PDF file].

Sigh.

Here's the individual images - click each for a larger version. My apologies for such a long entry... One of these days I'll figure out Flickr or somesuch service... Extra credit (seriously... 1% on final grade) for those who can track down title/artist for each of the non-snapshot works (that means everything but the Xipe Totec image, the shot of Buckingham Fountain, the totally white image, the portrait of Neil Armstrong, the lolcat, the Kyle Field shot, and the elephants holding trunks)